Entries from February 2008 ↓

GNC Gold Card Members, today is the last day in February to use your GNC Gold Card.

For those who are unfamiliar with GNC’s Gold Card, it is their discount membership program that gives members a 20% discount off their purchases during the first 7 days of the month. The membership costs $15 dollars a year, but for most people, the card pays for itself in the first purchase or two. Click here to purchase a Gold Card Membership.

I’ve used my Gold Card this month, have you? If you havent, Gold Card Members click here to save your 20% before the Gold Card Days are over.

If you expect to make gains and be successful in your workout, you need to make sure that you have a strong nutritional foundation. A good multivitamin is one of the essentials. No matter if your workout is designed to lose weight or put on muscle a multivitamin is key. The reason is that the body requires several of the micronutrients provided by the multivitamin for certain processes.

When you workout, the muscle breaks down and then heals during your recovery time. Each time the muscle breaks down and recovers it gets stronger. As your workout continues, it takes more effort, or weight, to break the muscle down. This is how you make gains in your workout and build muscle, whether that be lean muscle or gain bulk. During the process of breaking the muscle down, chemical byproducts are released that are called free radicals. The free radicals interfere with the recovery process and can prevent gains in your workout. Vitamins with antioxidant properties, such as vitamins C & E, help eliminate free radicals. They help boost your immune system.

To lose weight, your metabolism needs to be operating at peak efficiency. B vitamins are essential for energy and your body’s metabolism.

The multivitamin that I use and recommend is GNC’s Ultra Mega Gold. It is high in all essential vitamins, including B vitamins and vitamins C & E. They also have several other speciality vitamins available. You can information on GNC’s Multivitamins here.

After one of my last posts about 5 to 6 small meals a day, I got several emails asking, can’t I just cut calories?  Here is what I’ve come to understand why just cutting calories doesn’t work.  If you normally take in 2500 to 3500 calories daily and cut it to 1000 to 1250, that will work at first, but won’t last.  It will actually come back to hurt you.  By doing that, you are triggering the body’s starvation mode.  It is part of the body’s mechanism to adapt to its surroundings.  It sees food as now scarce, and slows down the metabolism to store as much as it can.  Since you are depriving yourself, you also eventually begin to crave the favorite foods you are missing.  Finally, when everything crashes, you are back to eating 3500 calories daily, but with a much slower metabolism than before and have set yourself up to gain more weight than you lost.  By going with around 300 - 400 calories 5 to 6 times a day, your body does not see a lack of food, but an abundance of food, therefore does not feel the need to store.  Your metabolism keeps burning.  Don’t forget, exercise is still important, even if it is going for a walk.  Till next time, The Average Joe.