Taking in nutrients directly after a workout is imperative.  It aides the body in recovery, repairs muscle cells, reduces soreness, raises hormone levels, and refills glycogen stores.  The sooner nutrients are consumed and absorbed, the faster the body goes from a catabolic state (muscle destroying) to an anabolic state (muscle building)  This is why a liquid meal is better post-workout than a solid meal.  A liquid is more readily absorbed by the body than solid.  This isn’t to say a solid post-workout meal is bad.  Liquid is just slightly better.

What do you consume after a workout?

First off you want a carbohydrate high on the glycemic index (GI scale).  Eat a high GI food when your glycogen levels are full is a bad idea, as your body will store the excess as fat.  However, when your body is depleted of glycogen (after a workout), a high GI food is the right idea.  Insulin is released after consumption of high GI food.  Insulin is a protein hormone that is vital for metabolism of carbs, fats, and proteins.  Having an elevated insulin level slows down the decrease in amino acids and keeps a positive nitrogen level.  To complete the process however, you need to introduce protein to the equation.  A fast digesting protein, such as whey isolate (protein powder) combined with a high GI carb will result in significant muscle growth.  Aim for a ratio of 2.5 carbs:1 protein.

There are other things to consider, but for practical purposes, this is a great routine to get into following your workout.

1.  They use larger plates.  When two plates were offered, 98.6% of people with a higher BMI (I know not the best measurement) took the larger plate in a buffet line.  A larger plate will fool your brain into thinking you’re eating less than you actually are.  Use a smaller plate, get a smaller waist line.

2.  They eat while looking at food.  41.7% took seats that directly faced the buffet, as opposed to seats out of eyesight of the food.  Looking at food (not on our table) makes our body and mind less full and feel we have more work to do, i.e. eat more.  Keep food stored away and not laying out during the day.

3.  They eat with maximum efficiency.  Some buffets offer chopsticks.  The clinically obese almost always opt for forks.  Try using chopsticks around the home to slow down eating and create a feeling of fullness with less calories consumed.

4.  They clean their plates.  During the study, 94% cleaned their plates to the point of nothing being left.  Forget your Mom’s advice and leave a little food left on the plate.

5.  They chew less.  The researchers observed chewing of participants in the study.  The heaviest one-third chewed their food almost 25% less than the leanest one-third.  Slow down.  Take your time.  Chew your food.

6.  They jump right in.  The most obese people didn’t take time to observe all the items on the buffet.  They grabbed a plate and started in right away.  The leanest took their time and made a lap of the buffet.  In your day to day life, stop and think for a second before you eat.  Often times that quick craving will slowly fade away.

7.  They skip breakfast.  They don’t call it the most important meal of the day for a reason.  Skipping breakfast regularly increases your risk of obesity by 450%.  Take the time to have a healthy breakfast in the morning.  It will jump start your metabolism and leave you less hungry by lunch.

The Sugar-Packed Snack: Yogurt

Brace yourself for culture shock. Plain yogurt naturally contains about 16 grams of sugar per cup. But if you eat flavored yogurt, you could be downing 15 or more additional grams of sugar, which is like shoveling in four extra teaspoonfuls.

Slim Strategy
Choose plain, low-fat yogurt and stir in a teaspoon of honey, maple syrup, or all-fruit spread for a hint of sweetness. Or opt for fat-free Greek yogurt, which is lower in sugar than even regular plain yogurt but often has double the protein to keep you satisfied longer.

The Tricky Treat: Sugar-Free Cookies and Candy

Don’t fall for the no-sugar scam: When manufacturers remove the sweet stuff, they often add fat. One popular brand offers chocolate-chip cookies that each contain 160 calories and 9 grams of fat, so why not eat the real thing? You might save calories with sugar-free candy, but many contain sorbitol, which can cause bloating and diarrhea.

Slim Strategy
Get your cookie fix with graham crackers, which have almost a teaspoon less sugar per serving than many other packaged cookies. Or find a 100-calorie snack pack of your favorite (try Keebler Fudge Shoppe Mini Fudge Stripes). Taking a trip to candy land? Grab a 60-calorie Tootsie Pop or a York Peppermint Pattie (140 calories and 2.5 grams of fat).

The Backpack Bad Guy: Trail Mix

Store-bought versions of this hiking staple should take a hike. A 1-ounce handful of banana chips packs 10 grams of fat (they’re usually deep-fried), and yogurt-covered raisins are coated with partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, which contains saturated and trans fats.

Slim Strategy
Toss your own trail mix with nuts, dried fruit (raisins or chopped apricots), whole-grain cereal, mini pretzels, and a few chocolate chips. Limit your portion to one cup.

The Mediocre Munchie: Veggie Chips

The rainbow-hued chips are no better than their potato counterparts. While both may boast a little vitamin A or C, your hips won’t know the difference: The salty snacks have about 150 calories and 9 or 10 grams of fat per handful. And that bag may contain plain old chips in disguise; sometimes manufacturers simply add food coloring to potato flour.

Slim Strategy
Be sure your chips list a vegetable, not potato flour or corn flour, as the first ingredient (we like Terra Chips) and stick with just one portion. Or skip them in favor of baked tortilla chips: Pair a serving (about 12 chips) with 1/2 cup of salsa; you’ll quell your crunch craving and get a full serving of veggies with only 153 nearly fat-free calories

The Cereal Saboteur: Granola

Pancakes drowned in syrup, eggs swimming in hollandaise sauce — is there a healthy option on the brunch menu? Granola seems harmless, but it’s no breakfast of champions. One cup contains up to 560 calories and 28 grams of fat before you add milk.

Slim Strategy
Reluctant to give up that sweet, nutty taste? Skip granola at restaurants, where you can’t control your portion. Enjoy it at home by mixing a quarter cup into a cup of low-cal, whole-grain cereal, such as All-Bran Complete Wheat Flakes, or sprinkle a tablespoon on oatmeal.

The Fishy Take-Out: Sushi

Say sayonara to the trendy American-style sushi rolls. They’re stuffed with high-cal ingredients like cream cheese, mayo, and shredded cheese. And remember that tempura is simply another way of saying “‘battered and fried.”‘ One shrimp tempura roll (just six pieces of sushi) contains about 500 calories and 20 grams of fat.

Slim Strategy
Look for the basics — fish, rice, seaweed, vegetables — and skip creamy sauces. Sashimi (sliced raw fish, no rice) and nigiri (raw fish with rice) are safe, as are cucumber rolls. Order a side of protein-rich edamame to fill you up.

The Liquid Lunch: Smoothies

Sure, you’ll get your fruit servings. You’ll also fit in a meal’s worth of calories, and in some cases, way more fat than you think (17 grams in one popular chain’s 16-ounce chunky strawberry smoothie). Even if you substitute one for breakfast, you’re pushing your calorie limit: Some smoothies weigh in at 500 calories.

Slim Strategy
Pick the smallest size available, and avoid high-cal mixers like frozen yogurt, sherbet, sorbet, and especially peanut butter and granola. One good bet at Jamba Juice: the Berry Fulfilling (150 calories). Pair it with a low-fat cheese stick or a hard-boiled egg for an on-the-go breakfast or midafternoon snack.

The Sneaky Sip: Diet Drinks

That can of zero-calorie soda glued to your palm may be your waistline’s worst enemy: Research from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio found that people who drink artificially sweetened beverages gained more weight than those who didn’t, possibly because the sweet flavor may trigger cravings for the real thing. In another study, soda sippers were more likely to develop metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions including high blood pressure and ab fat that raises heart-disease risk.

Slim Strategy
Reserve diet soda for an occasional treat. Get your fizz fix from seltzer or sparkling mineral water, such as San Pellegrino.

The Villainous Vinaigrette: Fat-Free Salad Dressing

Without fat, your salad is dressed for diet success, right? Wrong. Your body needs fat to absorb certain nutrients in veggies. In a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who used fat-free dressings didn’t absorb any lycopene or beta-carotene, two health-boosting antioxidants.

Slim Strategy
Get an oil-based, reduced-fat dressing (usually 2 to 4 grams of fat per 2 tablespoons) that contains heart-healthy oils like olive and canola. Or make your own by whisking together 2 teaspoons of olive oil, 1 1/2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon of Dijon mustard, and a pinch of minced garlic.

The Foul Fowl: Ground Turkey

It seems like a no-brainer for burgers and lasagna, but ground turkey often includes fat and skin. A 3-ounce serving can contain 13 grams of fat — almost triple the amount in lean ground beef. With 40-plus percent of your day’s worth of cholesterol, regular ground chicken is no better.

Slim Strategy
Look closely at labels. Extra-lean turkey is your best bet, with 1 gram of fat and no saturated fat per serving. Can’t find it? Buy at least 92 percent lean ground beef.

Via Fitness Magazine

So many trainers out there have gotten it into their heads that protein is the ONLY macronutrient responsible for adding muscle mass.  They tell you to avoid carbohydrates because they will only make you fat and not help you put on lean muscle mass.  These trainers are sadly misinformed.  Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of energy.  Carbs are stored as glycogen in the liver and in muscle cells.  When energy is needed, the body converts carbs into ATP (energy your body uses) by glycolisis. 

If there are not enough carbs, your body will convert protein into an energy source.  This process is called gluconeogensis.  Needless to say, taking protein away from muscle cells to make energy is not going to help you pack on lean muscle mass.  So for all of you who have heard trainers say, eat protein, limit carbs…realize what is really going on inside your body.  Your massive protein intake is forced to energize your body because carbohydrate levels are depleted, thereby limiting the gains from all your hard work in the gym.

When the topic of organic food comes up, most people think of fruit, vegetables, and perhaps dairy, but almost always fail to consider meat. This is an unfortunate mistake because meat from conventionally raised livestock comes with significant risk.

You Are What You Eat

Each of the trillions of cells that we’re made of are created from the nutrients we eat. While a healthy diet will support optimal cell function, a poor diet will promote cell malfunction and lead to disease. As the saying goes, we are what we eat!

This applies to animals as well. If forced to eat poor quality food, they’ll likely become sick and develop disease. By eating meat from these unhealthy animals, you’re relying on a poor source of nutrition and are consuming the toxic chemicals that made them sick. They’ll eventually make you sick as well. In other words, you are what your food ate! This is an important concept to keep in mind throughout the rest of the article.

Are Farmers Smarter Than Nature?

Understanding that livestock will do best on the diet they naturally eat in the wild is nothing more than common sense. Despite this, conventional farmers don’t even come close to raising their livestock in this fashion.

Based on millions of years of evolution, cattle and sheep eat grass while chickens and pigs primarily eat insects and plants. However, conventional farmers choose to ignore the significance of evolution and force their livestock to eat grain. In many cases, livestock are kept in enclosed buildings, and because they don’t have access to natural pastures, grain is all they eat.

How well do you think your health would hold up if you ate nothing but grass your entire life? It wouldn’t hold up at all! Because these animals are forced to eat foods that they’re not evolved to process, their health doesn’t hold up either.

Grain Quality Translates Into Meat Quality

As with most conventional crops, the grain fed to livestock is heavily sprayed with pesticides and other toxic chemicals. This causes health problems for the animals that eat the grain, and also for us when we eat the meat of these animals.

In addition to the chemicals, the conventional grain will probably have low nutrient levels. Based on all the consequences of the grain only diet, it’s highly unlikely that the livestock will receive the nutrition they need to support good health and this further compounds the risk of sickness and disease.

Furthermore, the grain that conventional farmers feed their livestock is often very poor in quality. In many cases, farmers save money by purchasing grain that failed inspection for human consumption, usually because of mold growth. Ironically, by eating meat from the animals that eat this grain, humans are exposed to the mold toxins anyway.

In general, the meat from purely grain fed livestock is not very nutritious, especially if the grain is of poor quality. The potential for the meat to contain toxins makes it a health risk as well.

Would You Like a Side of Antibiotics With That?

It’s clearly a big problem for a farmer to have sick livestock. The connection between unhealthy livestock and the grain only diet should be a matter of common sense. But instead of choosing to improve livestock health through a better diet, conventional farmers compensate by feeding their livestock grain that’s laced with antibiotics. How convenient.

Antibiotics originate from toxins produced by fungi. Although this may surprise you, it shouldn’t. After all, the phrase anti biotic literally means anti life. Antibiotics kill without discrimination, and as a result, good bacteria is killed along with the bad. This can easily lead to intestinal imbalance and destroy your health. Because antibiotics are toxins and enter your blood stream, they can also cause unwanted problems anywhere in your body.

In many cases, livestock are raised under such poor conditions that antibiotics just aren’t enough to keep them healthy. They become infected by parasites and develop cancer, glandular swelling, infectious arthritis, pneumonia, and other serious health issues. What’s most frightening is that the FDA allows the meat from these sick animals to be passed along to your plate as long as any relevant tumors or lesions are removed. Do you really want to eat the meat of a cancerous animals?

How About Some Newspaper and Cardboard?

Many conventional farmers are completely overcome with a greed based mentality. As such, they focus on efficiency and strive for quantity at the cost of quality. In exchange for easier profit, they’re sacrificing the health of their livestock, and more importantly, the health of the people who consume their meat.

To further reduce the cost of the already inexpensive grain, some farmers use fillers such as sawdust, cement dust, cardboard, newspaper, and sewage. Sounds tasty, doesn’t it? Before you answer, consider the fact that you may already be eating some of these fillers if you eat conventionally raised meat!

The use of these fillers provides the greedy farmer with another significant advantage that increases the incentive even further. In addition to reducing costs, the fillers also cause the livestock to gain weight. Because most farmers are paid by the pound for their livestock, this is an amazing deal. They not only save money on feed, but are also rewarded with additional profit. As you can probably imagine, only a farmer with the purest intentions would pass on this opportunity.

Hormones are Also on the Menu

For some farmers, the use of cheap grain and filler isn’t enough. To further accelerate growth, they feed synthetic hormones to their livestock.

Synthetic hormones are often associated with cancer. Furthermore, hormones can be very powerful in small concentrations and have a significant effect on our day to day function. It doesn’t take much to disrupt our delicate and complex hormonal balance, and when it does go out of balance, our health will often deteriorate significantly. Remember, if you eat an animal that was fed synthetic hormones, you’re eating the hormones as well.

Apparently, nature just isn’t fast enough for the business minded farmer. With the use of grains, fillers, antibiotics, and hormones, conventional farmers are able to bring a steer to full size in less than a year and a half. Under natural conditions, it would take 4 or 5 years! These animals are basically being transformed into mutants. Is that what you want to have on your plate every day?

A Quick Note About Dairy

Although this article is about meat, I want to quickly mention a related concern about dairy. Some farmers use a hormone called recombinant bovine growth hormone which is specifically designed to increase the lactation period of cattle. In fact, it nearly doubles it. As with other synthetic hormones, rBGH is linked to cancer and can disrupt normal hormone balance.

Producing milk is a physiologically demanding process for cattle. Their bodies are simply not evolved to handle the amount of milk production that’s possible with rBGH. As a result, their utters often become inflamed and infected which causes puss to be secreted into the milk. How does that make a nice thick milk mustache sound?

The cattle that are injected with rBGH are literally milked to death and typically die after approximately two years.

Animal Cruelty

Some of the horror stories associated with conventionally raised livestock are enough to turn a meat lover into a vegetarian. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. As omnivores, eating animal meat is part of our evolution. Although vegetarians and vegans may argue this point, meat is quite simply a basic part of our natural diet. But this certainly doesn’t justify the inhumane ways that some farmers maintain their livestock.

In many cases, conventionally raised livestock are kept indoors where they get absolutely no exposure to sunlight, are so crowded that they can barely move, and are forced to live in their own feces. This merely scratches the surface of how bad the living conditions can be for these animals. This significantly impacts the health of the animal and the nutritional quality of it’s meat, but more importantly, it’s cruel, inhumane, and absolutely unnecessary.

Any time you buy meat or dairy that comes from conventionally raised livestock, keep in mind that you may be supporting these cruel and inhumane practices.

The Alternative – Buying Quality Meat

The good news is that there are plenty of healthy and humane alternatives to the meat that comes from conventionally raised livestock.

Although organic certification is a fairly reliable marker of high quality fruits and vegetables, that’s not entirely the case with meat. While organic meat is free of hormones, drugs, and other chemicals, it may still come from a predominately grain fed animal. Even though the grain must be organic, it still compromises the health of the animal and the quality of it’s meat. Furthermore, people who are sensitive to grains can also be sensitive to meat that comes from grain fed animals.

The absolute best way to buy meat is to find a local farmer that raises livestock according to their natural diets, under humane conditions, and follows organic farming practices. Don’t be overly concerned with organic certification. Local farmers often have too small of an operation to justify the expense, and by overlooking this, you may be missing out on an excellent resource.

Below are some guidelines on what to look for when evaluating a potential source of meat.

Beef and Lamb

Cattle and sheep naturally eat grass. As such, you should buy beef and lamb from farms that allow their livestock to roam freely on grass pastures. Meat from a pasture raised livestock is often referred to as “grass fed.” Verify that pesticides and other chemicals aren’t used on the pastures and that the animals are not treated with antibiotics or hormones. Some organic minded farmers will use antibiotics on rare occasion when an animal absolutely needs it. You’ll have to decide for yourself if this is acceptable or not.

Some organic farmers “finish” their livestock with grain. This means the animal was raised on grass pastures, but was fed grain for a brief period before slaughter to increase the flavor and marbling of the meat. Personally, I think this is completely unnecessary and think purely grass fed beef and lamb taste excellent, but once again, it’s your choice.

Chicken and Pork

Chickens and pigs have much more variety in their diet than cattle and sheep. Chickens eat mostly insects and plants while pigs will eat just about anything. Because these animals eat more than just grass, their meat is often referred to as “free range.” This means they’re free to roam the pastures of the farm and are free to choose what they eat.

I’m not sure if chickens and pigs eat grain in the wild. My guess is that they don’t, but it seems to be quite acceptable and common for organic farmers to supplement the diet of their chickens and pigs with grain. What’s important is that the animals have the freedom to roam the pasture and consume the natural food it provides.

As with cattle and sheep, you want to make sure the pastures are free of chemicals and that the animals are not exposed to drugs or hormones.

Via Naturalbias.com

The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp, Chad.  Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23 USD Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat

In honor of National Nutrition Month, we take a look at what families all across the globe are eating over a one week period.  Take a look at the TIME magazine gallery link below.  It really hammers home some important points; some of us are eating some really bad foods (Revis family of USA), some of us are eating really simply but healthy (Ahmed family of Cairo), and some of us are barely eating at all (Aboubakar family of Chad).  We should all be thankful for what we have, but also be cognizant of the fact the majority of us have the ability to change our diets.  Seeing some of these weekly diets (especially the Americans) is alarming.  A diet made up of 80% high-sodium, highly sugary, processed foods is a recipe for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, among other ailments.  Let this gallery serve as a wake up call to all of us.  Let’s recognize and acknowledge our bad eating habits, strive to eat like those with good habits, and help those who don’t have enough to even form an eating habit.

Gallery found  at TIME.com