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Oatmeal Muffinookies - A Power Snack

My summer became very busy and I still haven’t finished reading BFFM and the two other books I’ve been reading. BFFM really helped me stay focused and even shed a couple of extra pounds of fat.

The other day, the idea of healthy oatmeal cookies got into my head but unlike all other recopies that I’ve come up, this one will take some rework. My goal was low fat, no sugar, and high protein oatmeal cookies, dens in nutrition. I got low fat, no sugar, high protein, and dens in nutrition but not cookies. I suppose I ended up with kind of un-moist muffins. They weren’t dry, per se, but came out like fat free muffins from a health store; very tasty but of undetermined identity, neither cookies nor muffins. I was still very pleased with the taste and the nutrition value so I’ll share the recipe. It’s a recipe for a great Oatmeal Power Snack.

One batch makes about 12 cookies. Since they are of rather rich ingredients I recommend only 1 or 2 depending on the time of the day and whether you have skipped a meal.

Oatmeal Power Snack

1 cup old-fashioned oats

1/2 cup almond flour (quinoa flour can be substituted)

1/2 cup raisins

4 scoops protein powder (I used cookies & cream)

2 tbsp chia seeds

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp yogurt

1tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp cacao nibs (dark chocolate for you chocaholics)

3 whole omega-3 eggs

3/4 cup natural almond and/or peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Mix everything except the eggs, peanut butter, and the yogurt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl beat the eggs with the yogurt, add the peanut butter, and pour into the dry ingredients. Mix the thick cookie dough with a wooden spoon.
Scoop with a table spoon on a greased cookie sheet and press into circles. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Nutrition Facts (based on 2 cookies):

Calories 605
Fat 36 g
Carbs 38 g
fiber 10 g
Protein 38 g

I will revisit this recipe in an attempt to make cookies not Muffinookies.

4th of July in Madrid

This year for 4th of July I went to Madrid, Spain. Although the destination was different from the last 8 years the objective of the 4th of July madness was the same – health and leanness!

I started preparing on time this year with running and changing my work out as well as with revisiting my nutritional plan. I had a big challenge right before 4th of July though – I went home to Bulgaria. As you know nothing tastes as good as the food you grow up with and especially when made by your loving mom! I started very cautiously, the first couple of days, avoiding major carb and fat bombs.

I didn’t do too badly with my solid diet over the weekend whilst visiting my friends beach bar, Playa de Chambao, on the Black Sea, but didn’t do that well with my liquid diet.

For the next 3 days, right before 4th of July, I let all hell to break lose; I ate and drank whatever I wanted, I only kept tab on the quantity, somewhat that is.

I can’t describe how much I enjoyed Madrid. I was pleasantly surprised of how big it was. I was expecting a smaller city. Madrid impressed me with its combination of wide boulevards and quaint cobblestone streets. The buildings were big, with beautiful, old architecture, and all well maintained. To me, Madrid is the city of plazas – Plaza la Luna, Plaza de Colon, Plaza Mayor, Plaza de Espania, Plaza Carlos Cambronero, are only a few of the remarkable plazas in Madrid.

As far as the food was concerned, a friend of mine had already warned me that it’d be amazing, and it utterly was. Zakki and I found one of the crown jewels of Madrid culinary offerings – restaurant Lamucca.

The motto at restaurant Lamucca is “Eat, Drink … and Buy the Furniture”, the idea being that you can buy the table you ate at or the designer chair you sat on during your meal. The windows look out onto the large terrace of the Plaza Carlos Cambronero. The food is international with a large variety of dishes including pizza, pasta, tasty salads, Thai soup, fillet steak with truffle-oil-scented French fries. A wide range of cocktails and good wines at reasonable prices are available at the bar.

Despite the great food and my trip to Mom’s land, I came back 10lbs lighter, in other words all my fat and muscles were gone. Eating just a couple of delicious meals a day plus all the going out and about would do it.

In actuality, I can’t complain that I leaned out but the fight now is to find motivation to hit the gym really hard and to build back the lost muscle tissue. Thankfully I’ve got just the thing – Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) by Tom Venuto. In my opinion, BFFM is a great motivational read; very well written and there are no 2 opinions about the fact that if you follow the book you’d get amazing results.

A Ground Turkey Recipe, to Bring Variety

With 4th of July just around the corner I’ve cranked up the diet and focused on the gym.
The AMD program by Jim Smith has been a great Spring in to Summer program. It’s a Very intense but short workouts; lots of sweating and good results.

One big deficiency of the AMD e-book is the inconsistency of the exercise names. It’s definitely not easy to printout the program and when you cannot remember an exercise just by the name to go and find it in the pdfs. It should be as easy as typing it’s name in the find box.

On a different note, here is a turkey recipe that I came up with to mix up the same old:

Eagle Nests

1. 5 lb Lean ground turkey
1 lb Tofu (soft)
3 whole eggs
1.5 cup Oats
1 cup Chopped onions
1 ts Black pepper
1 tbs. Oregano

Turn the oven to preheat to 375.
Place the ground turkey in a large bowl and crumble the block of soft tofu on top of it. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well with your fist.
Using a measuring cup, scoop one cup of the mixture and place on a lightly greased, with olive oil, baking pan or sheet.
Don’t overfill the cup measure and you should be able to make 8 balls. Shape the balls as if you are making a pot out of clay and crack one whole egg in each nest.
Place in the oven for about 45 min or till the eggs firm up.

Serve one nest with side of broccoli or your favorite vegetables. You can top it off with some pasta sauce.

Nutrition per serving (1 nest):

Calories: 334
Protein: 33g
Fat: 19g
Carbs: 23g

AMD – The Definitive 16 week guide to Accelerated Muscular Development by Jim Smith.

Jim Smith’s e-book combines a few important training concepts into a potent workout. I like the fact that he both outlines the concepts and then gives the details.

For the $77 I paid I got access to about 13 pdf files that comprise the written material and 3 videos. The videos are a nice touch; although homemade they give you a real sense of the workout.

I really like that Jim emphasizes the effects of our desk jobs and immobile lifestyles on our overall muscular and skeletal development. Few of us realize the perversity of our sedentary lifestyles. By constantly sitting, our muscles, joints and tendons literary atrophy. Even when exercising, we usually choose such a narrow range of movements that we cause certain muscles to shorten and ultimately end-up with injuries.
With that in mind, AMD starts and ends with exercises that help activate our muscles, joints and tendons and keep us free of injuries.

The outline of a workout contains 5 parts:
1. Accelerated Corrective Strategies
2. Warm-up
3. Workout (Undulating Periodization & Escalated Density Training)
4. Core Strength
5. Accelerated Corrective Strategies

Accelerated Corrective Strategies:

Self-Myofascial Release – foam roller (improve soft tissue quality and expandability)
Mobility Exercises – for the hips, ankles & shoulders (increase the mobility of joints)
Activation – for the shoulders, gluteals & quadriceps (activate immobilized muscles)
The idea is that we need to prepare our bodies for the workout, workout hard and then make sure that we finish up with some exercises and stretches that keep us injury free.

Warm-up:

We’ll prepare our central nervous system (CNS) for the upcoming demands of the workout and will incorporate dynamic, large range of motion (ROM) movements. Benefits: Increased core, joint, tissue temperature, increased blood flow.

Examples:
• various bodyweight calisthenics
• jogging, skipping, cradle walks, high hurdles
• circuits or complexes; elastic bands, barbells, bodyweight, dumbbells
• treadmill / exercise bike / elliptical for time

Workout (Undulating Periodization & Escalated Density Training):

1. Primary Exercise (using Undulated Periodization)
2. 5 minute superset of 2 supplemental exercises (using Escalated Density Training)
3. 5 minute superset of 2 supplemental exercises (using Escalated Density Training)

Primary exercises (Undulated Periodization):

4 sets of 6 reps (power)
3-4 sets of 8 reps (strength)
3-4 sets of 12 reps (muscle size)
• With a 90 -120 seconds rest periods

Supplemental Exercises:

Superset antagonist muscles for 5 minutes without resting between sets

Then rest 2 – 3 minutes and

Superset antagonist muscles for 5 minutes without resting between sets

I usually chose load (weight) around 12 reps max and do 4 sets for each exercise, staring with 10 reps. This usually gives me 5 minutes alternating.

Example: Seated Rows & Dumbbell Shrugs

Set 1. Seated Rows 10 & Dumbbell Shrugs 10
Set 2. Seated Rows 8 & Dumbbell Shrugs 8
Set 3. Seated Rows 8 & Dumbbell Shrugs 8
Set 4. Seated Rows 6 & Dumbbell Shrugs 6

Core Strength:

2 sets of 15 – 20 reps of various core (abbs) exercises.

Born to Run

“Born to Run” had a pivotal impact on me. In this awesome book I discovered 3 fundamental things. First and foremost, I learned a huge deal about human beings and running/exercising for the sheer joy of the act and not for the end result of vanity. Second, I was enlightened about the human biomechanics of running and how important toe-to-hill striking and minimalist shoes are. Third, I was introduced to Chia seeds as a super food.

I used to never run and didn’t like running at all. Then a few years back, when I started the 4th of July Madness initiative, I decided to give running a shot. Starting to run was very painful but enjoyable and helped me to get in shape by shedding a few extra pounds. Ever since I’ve been trying to keep up with running and I even learned how to run without much pain in a pair of Reebok shoes with a lot of arch support. Reading Born to Run made me realize that I love running and that I’d like to be able to run for many years to come for the joy of running and not only to keep lean.

The problem is that running has a very bad name injury wise. I hear, almost every day, how we are not cutout to run and how by running we have to sacrifice our joints and back. Born to run shattered this awful theory to pieces.

Of course, I strongly recommend reading “Born to Run” to any athlete and person who loves to exercise. The book is an awesome read for the story plot and for the general message. It’s a great motivational work of art, subconsciously promoting appreciation and love of life and our planet.

After reading this book I was inspired to change the way I run and to slowly transition to minimal shoes running. I was also enthused to learn to run longer distances. I did some additional research on minimal footwear running, and here are a couple of great websites where you can get the gist of the technical side of things:

The Harvard University – Biomechanics of Foot Strikes & Applications to Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footwear

A place where you can find reviews of minimal footwear – barefootrunner.com

4th of July Madness 2010

My cardio during busy season was down to a bare minimum. I hit the treadmill and the stairmaster at the gym a few times but nothing major. Thankfully, we are enjoying a nice spring season and I started running outside at the end of March, the beginning of April.

Running is an integral part of the 4th of July Madness initiative but so is researching new workouts and healthy initiatives. As part of the 2010 4th of July Madness I picked up 2 books – “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen” by Christopher McDougall and an e-book - “Accelerated Muscular Development” (AMD) by Jim Smith; both excellent reads and very valuable.

Accelerated Muscular Development helped me refocus and get motivated at the gym and Born to Run inspired me to reevaluate the reasons I run for and motivated me to relearn how to run. More insight on both books in later posts, I promise.

In last year’s 4th-of-July-Madness research I found Eric Cressey’s book: Maximum Strength as well as his blog. I’m a huge fan of Eric’s. I have to admit that a big part of his blog is a malenki bit over my head but I have drawn endless motivation from his blog and have learned a great deal from his shared experience.

I used the program and the knowledge from Maximum Strength starting last summer all through this winter. I literally relearned how to squat, deadlift and bench press as well as I learned how to prepare for a workout and what to do to say injury free.

I heard of Accelerated Muscular Development (AMD) while reading Eric’s blog. It’s an e-book which was a novelty for me. I have already read through all the manuals that came as a part of the e-book; I have extracted the programs in excel, have printed them and made them into reusable workout journals; I have also started the first phase of the book and loving it. The best part of AMD is that the workouts are extremely concise and dynamic. I feel motivated and am in and out of the gym in an hour, tops!

Keeping Sane, Fit, and Healthy During Busy Season

I would like to say thank you to Ivan Peev, a teenage-hood friend of mine, for inspiring me back to blogging also to Rebecca Faulconer for being my all-time muse.

I was chatting with Ivan via Facebook the other day and he said that he was reading my blog and got inspired to focus on his diet; he even bought the “Muscle Chow” book and was learning some cooking. I usually blog for the sheer pleasure of writing and to work on my English, but this was a great motivation.
In a previous post I shared that once you get lean it’s not an easy thing to give up. This was certainly put to the test during busy season at work. It’s human nature, when overwhelmed with work, to give up the gym. One way to deal with this situation is to take the high road of zero tolerance – when life pushes hard on you, you push yourself harder.

As I shared in “A Cyclical Pattern” winters are when I lose energy and motivation. Hence, I decided to be extra, extra focused and in the toughest of my schedule I put the most effort at the gym. Despite the lack of energy, I pushed and tried to increase my weights; I went to the gym even if it was 10:00pm and I’ve been up since 6:30am. I combined this with always bringing my self-prepared meals to work and did my best to eat healthy.

It took a “malenki” bit of extra discipline! (Completely of topic, I’m utterly infatuated with the use of Russian words in A Clockwork Orange) Working 6, full days a week, being away from home from 7:00am to 9:00 pm, didn’t leave a lot of time for anything so discipline was crucial. Sunday was the day to catch up on everything, including sleep, social life, and the good old house chores. I did my best to squeeze my grocery shopping and part of the weekly cooking.

On Sundays, I bought about 2,5lbs of fresh fish and cooked it on Monday night, which gave me half a pond of fish for dinner Monday to Friday. I usually make 5 salads at a time and put them in sealed tight plastic containers. This way I’d grab a salad and a cup-measure of fish, throw in some nuts, lemon and olive oil and dinner was ready. I’d also prepare some meat with veggies, usually went for steaming frozen veggies because of the lack of time, and would boil some eggs for a readymade snack. I’d toss a half a cup of oats with a handful of raw nuts, flax seeds and water, put it in the fridge over night, and add some protein powder in the morning for a quick nutritious breakfast. This way, in the morning I’d grab my breakfast, a couple of pieces of fruit, a serving of meet and veggies, a salad and a few eggs, and get on the road.

Back to Blogging After Busy Tax Season

How do you start blogging after a HUGE break? I suppose just like that:

I completed a successful busy season at work. As an auditor in public accounting, the first 4 months of each year are considered tax/busy season. We work 6 days a week, we travel to our clients’ place of business, in 5 of them, and we try to get as much work as humanly possible. This translates in getting up early to be on the road by 6:30 - 7:00am, working through lunch, working intensely a good 10 hours, getting in your car for another hour or two to get to the gym. Of course after such a long day you have no energy but you do your best there, knowing that once you slip there is no going back to the gym. Hence arriving home around 10:00pm on your gym days, making for a long, 16 hour day, and that is before you have done anything for dinner.

Guess what happens to people who tend to eat more when under stress in 4 months of this regimen. People can get really fat and unhealthy!

There are many ways to define junk food or unhealthy food. For one thing, not all calorie dense foods are unhealthy and not all low calorie foods are healthy. You could be thin and unhealthy, you could be fat and unhealthy, you could be of an average physique and healthy, or you could be lean, muscular and healthy. I bring this up because a lot of people get confused when talking about watching what you eat to be slim and to be healthy. Not to repeat myself, but you can do either – eat healthy and stay lean or eat unhealthy and stay thin.

In my understanding, unhealthy foods are - processed foods, prepared with white flour, hydrogenated fats, preservatives, lots of sodium, and artificial substances. Healthy foods are home prepared; do not contain any of the above, and are made with products that are reasonably close to their natural state.

There was a recent study looking at how the human brain handles multi tasking and how that relates to our food choices. In a nut shell:

If given to remember a long string of, let say, 10 numbers, and a few minutes later, while still struggling with retaining the numbers, we are provided with a food choice of a healthy and an unhealthy snacks, almost without a failure, we tend to go for the unhealthy one. By contrast, if our brain is not overwhelmed, we tend to make healthier choices.

Unfortunately, a busy season spells out exactly this situation but stretched out over 4 months with unhealthy food offerings all throughout. You tend to under sleep, have no time for breakfast, eat and work at lunch and dinner, your firm provides or reimburses takeout for dinner, and Saturday breakfast at work is bagels with cream cheese and muffins with butter. Where is the healthy choice? It’s there, you just have to look inside of yourself!

Maximum Strength

While I use a lot of discretion and self input to my diet based on the Muscle Chow book, I follow my workout program from the Maximum Strength book to the T. Probably the most important thing I learned from Eric Cressey was how to use the foam roller and how to stretch before every work out. I haven’t trained, not even once, without stretching since I started following the Maximum Strength program.

I have to say that I’ve been training very hard and the outcome has been incredible. My bench press, deadlift and squat have gone up in only 2 months. I haven’t done any abbs in the past 2 months but have a six pack. I shed almost 10lbs of fat with minimal muscle loss; my body developed uniformly and proportionately. Point in fact, my size 34 waist work pants are hanging on me and I fit in size 30.

My favorite part is that the workouts change every 4 weeks and become more and more challenging, which keeps me motivated. Also, even if I feel tired on the way to the gym, once I’m done with the foam roller and the stretch I’m awake for a serious workout. I’m not an expert but I’m confident that Eric Cressey has done an excellent job putting together the program taking into consideration 2 very important concepts - periodization and deload cycles. The program gradually prepares you for the next challenge while putting optimal stress on your frame. The repetitions and the number of sets vary from week to week as well as deloads at the end of each phase.

One of the things that were completely new to me was the so called “cluster.” For example, we take front squats and do (4X2) X 5. This translates in 5 clusters, where you do 2 reps, break for 10 seconds and do another 2 reps and like this 4 times to complete a cluster. In other words you do 2 squats, 10 sec break, 2 squats, 10 sec break, 2 squats, 10 sec break, 2 squats, 10 sec break, then break for 1-3 minutes before the second cluster. This is also varied in (5X1) X 6 or other ways.

Another concept which Eric Cressey incorporates is alternating sets between antagonist muscles (muscle groups) which promotes longer and better rest between sets in the same amount of time. For example, if you do a set of inclined bench press, break for a minute and next do a set of pull-ups, break for a minute and do a set of inclined bench press you would have achieved about a 3 minute break between sets per muscle without losing any time in the cumulative.

4th of July Madness 2009

I was able to complete a 2 week ripped phase under the Muscle Chow plan. Combined with strength training and the previous lean diet I achieved the desired fat loss and muscle retention. I felt good about accomplishing this year’s 4th-of-July-madness objective.

Interestingly, I was stuck at 184lbs for over a month, despite the visible loss of fat. However, when I came back from my vacation on Cape Cod I was 175lbs, meaning that to appear lean I have to be around 175lbs. The good news is that once you get into healthy, lean eating and you see the results it’s not that easy to give it up. While on vacation I consciously broke my diet, I ate pizza, ice cream, fried fish and French fries, cookies and fudge but continued the good stuff too – I snacked on yogurt, whey protein, fruit, and egg whites as well as veggies. Again, the key is not to let yourself get too hungry and never to revert to just the delicious comfort foods, something I did this weekend and feel terribly guilty about.

I let myself go this weekend; I ate chips and dips, crackers and cheeses, desserts etc. The more I snacked on these things the more insatiable I became. Since I was visiting a friend and our general tradition is to indulge in snacks I went overboard. I didn’t eat as much as I used to but was horrified to find out how easy it is to go back to the worst of eating habits.

I don’t regret enjoying some junk food and have a solution for next time. If I stack Joan’s fridge with some yogurt, hardboiled eggs, fruit, nuts and veggies ready to be eaten I’ll be safe. Also, we tend to delude ourselves that we just snaked a little and it wasn’t all that much food – not a good practice!
Ideally, I should eat the pillar meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner – on time and healthy, snack on something healthy if I need and enjoy a little of the delicious but fattening stuff. My point being, it is better for me to have a meal and then eat something bad than to stay hungry and dine on the bad stuff. This also spells better planning and communication.