Health & Nutrition - Supplements

I did not start taking supplements the same time as I started working out and used to dread taking many pills and disliked the nagging Jason did when he told me I should start taking supplements few years ago. It was only in end 2011 that I started taking supplements, after a bout of fungal infections. The first supplement I took was of course protein shakes, and the first supplement tablets I started taking was probiotics. So today, I'll be going into details of what each supplement is essential for. It'll be a long post so hang in there! :)

As you can see, I have bought most of my supplements from vitacost.com (explains some of the house brands that I have), will be trying iherb.com for my next order! Please note that I'll be touching on the brief benefits of each supplement (why I chose to take them) as it'll have to go on in pages if I were to explain everything. Go on and google more about them if you are interested to get any of the supplements that I'm taking. 

1. Folic acid - As some of you may know, folic acid is taken before and during pregnancy for women to prevent birth defects on the baby, so, yea that was the main reason why I started taking  them. HUR. However, it also keeps our hearts healthy and brains young!
2. Probiotics - These are also known as 'good bacteria' that can be found in yogurt and this is the only supplement I cannot live without. It helps improve your immune system and brain function, helps lower cholesterol levels and improve stomach health, and it treats allergies.
3. CoQ-10 - Improves heart health and acts as an anti-oxidant for your body.
4. Milk Thistle - Helps protect my liver from liver diseases
5. BCAA - Short for Branched Chain Amino Acids, to prevent muscle catabolism (muscle breakdown) especially important during my current Intermittent Fasting stint.
6. Multi-vitamins - To get a little more vitamins, minerals and nutrients than what I get from my daily food intake.
7. Calcium - Okay, the main reason why I'm forcing myself to eat these 3 calcium pills everyday is the fear of teeth and hair falling during and after pregnancy, since I don't drink milk everyday. On top of that, calcium better improves the absorbency of the other supplements that I take daily.
8. Fish oil - Very important staple if you are working out and bodybuilding. Fish oil reduces signs of aging, improves fat-burning and MOST IMPORTANTLY, preserves lean muscles and improve bone health.

Now that you know what I'm taking, I guess you should also know what I'm lacking. HAHA. Feel free to comment, email me if you think I'm lacking anything, or am taking too much of something? I'm very open to suggestions as well! I hope this post helps in clarifying some of your doubts and questions on what kind of supplements you decide to take.

Some updates from last week and yesterday..

Sunday OOTD before mass

My current back with WIIINGS!

May 2013 V.S Week 7 of IF

Team Axis was at Elias Park Primary yesterday and today, for the HPB program me "Be Smart, Don't Start"!

We homecooked last night, was craving salmon!

Yellow and green peppers with white fish!

That's all for today and have a fantastic week ahead everyone! Till thennnn!

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Health & Fitness: Legs workouts

Sorry for the hiatus everyone! I'm back with a quick introduction to some of my favorite legs workouts. I love legs day I can just do legs all day everyday (I kid, again)! But nevertheless, I like to work on my legs because I feel a lot more pump when I work them legs as compared to the other parts of my body, probably because I started working solely on my legs when I kickstarted my fitness journey. My goal then, was to down my usual bottom size of a small uk 10 to a regular or small uk 8. AND I did it, I can even fit into some uk 6 now (Okay for bottoms with bigger cutting). I did this within (if I'm not wrong, 4-6 months). I whacked my legs hard with my mediocre knowledge of weights training. I could go to the gym every just doing legs but I loved it, that's why I have weak and puny upper body.

Those who know me well enough, I dislike my heavy bottom and curves and really envy those who have a more masculine, mesomorph physique to start working out with. I tried very hard to try to straighten the curves that I have, and I'm still trying. So, how did I manage to downsize my huge bum and hips? I did a particular workout over and over again, everyday to downsize to a uk 8!

The winner is... LUNGES!!! When I had the chance to gym, I'd do lunges, over anything else and it worked! Lunges is a good training for your stabilising muscles too! Start doing lunges if you haven't!

The fundamentals of my legs training always starts with a strength-based back squats or front squats. The back squat targets your entire legs; quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes. 

Whereas the front squat targets your quadriceps and requires a lot more core control

Of course, when you are more advanced, adventurous and into cross fit, you can attempt the overhead squats. Overhead squat, similar to front squat, targets your quadriceps and core but with good stabilising muscles and strong triceps, shoulders and back. So basically, entire body. That's the reason why I'm only doing an empty bar. HURHUR.

Then, there is wide-stanced squats, which target your adductor muscles (inner thighs) and glutes. You want a tighter 'upper' butt, this is one good workout you can do to tighten the 'upper' butt. Always remember to keep your knees out though. Also beware, the after-feeling of doing wide-stances squats can be rather uncomfortable. HEH.

The calf raise, is very often neglected and forgotten but ladies especially, should do to strengthen the calf muscles so it prevents injuries wearing heels! 

Lastly, I usually do wallballs after I finish what I planned to do, and add wallballs into a circuit or met con. It requires deltoids (shoulders) and legs, simpler version of a thruster to me, what with the similar hip thrusts and straightening of arms for the deltoids. You can do this for fun and increase the weight of your medicine ball for more challenge.

So, I have shared my secrets with you guys! Now go ahead and make it work! You wanna get perky butt and toned legs, you have to work hard on them legs. Moreover, our legs are the biggest muscle group in our body so by training legs and back (another large muscle group), you are releasing growth hormones and testosterone more than the other body parts, thus burning more fats!

Have fun with your legs training and happy midweek everyone! (=

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Health and Nutrition - Creamy mushroom soup

It's been awhile since I shared my last recipe so here goes, the recipe for creamy mushroom soup! 

Ingredients:

- Assorted mushrooms (portobello, button, shitake, etc)

- Italian Parsley (flat-leaf)

- 4-5 tablespoon of Greek yogurt (to replace cream)

- 2 tablespoon of cottage cheese (to replace cream)

- Milk

- 1 garlic clove (I used 1.5 but felt it was abit too much)

- 1-2 onions (I used 1 but I thought it'll be nicer if I had put 2 instead)

- 1 yellow onion

- Olive oil 

1. Soak the mushrooms and wash them thoroughly, especially the portobello if you are using them.

2. Chop the mushrooms into small pieces.

 3. Chop the other ingredients up; onions, garlic and parsley leaves.

4. Heat up a frying pan and with a little bit of olive oil and put all the ingredients in except for the mushrooms when the pan is hot. Fry for awhile until you can smell the fragrance (NOT TILL BROWN).

5. Put the mushrooms in and fry everything together. REMEMBER, do not fry till brown.

6. Before you start to put all the ingredients into the blender, pick out some of the mushrooms and lay them in a bowl. This will be added into the soup to boil so there will be some bigger chunks of mushrooms.

7. Portion by portion, put the ingredients in a blender and blend them together, adding a bit of milk every round.

8. Pour all the blended mixture, together with the chunks of mushrooms into a pot and turn on the heat to medium. Stir till it boils, after which switch the heat to low and let it slow boil while you add the yogurt and cottage cheese in. You may add a few teaspoons of salt to season. Keep stirring until everything else blends and there you go! Your creamy mushroom soup is ready!

We also prepared this easy-to-make egg muffins using turkey breast ham as the base. Did not turn out yummy I thought, because I could not find peppers at the supermarket! Will be attempting my next batch using chopped peppers and taco or salsa sauce! Nevertheless, this is simple to make if you do not have much time to prepare elaborated ones.

Ingredients used:

- 200g of turkey breast ham

- 6 eggs

- Parmesan cheese

- Olive oil

1. Lubricate the muffin mould using olive oil and lay the ham on the muffin mould nicely as the bases. Next, put the parmesan cheese in as much as you like and top the cheese with an egg. It's that easy!

2. Preheat the oven to about 180 degree celcius and once then put the mould into the oven. I think we waited about 10 minutes but do take note and watch the muffins just in case they get too cooked.

VOILA! The muffins we made are slightly overcooked so just be careful if you want those very soft-boiled kind of eggs.

Hope you enjoyed the recipes and do post photos and tag me on IG @limaranagustina! Have a great week ahead everyone! Till the next!

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Product Review: Smartshake - Neon Series

It's been more than a year since I started bringing all these out with me every single day. Sometimes I misplace them individually in my huge gym bag that I got so annoyed with myself for forgetting to bring either my sups, pre workout drink or my additional scoop of protein for busier days, only to find out days later that they are actually somewhere hidden in my bag. HAHA. As somebody who works out regularly, it is important that we have enough protein, vitamins and other supplements in a day. So, how do you pack yours?

This was how I usually pack mine:

I have never paid for a shaker bottle, because I always get them FOC from my protein powder orders online. And sadly, none of them lasted long enough for me. Thank God for Smartshake! I first saw it on bodybuilding forum but had never really enticed me to get one mainly because of the hassle of shipping in from US. NOW you have it in Singapore and they come in such cute colors from the NEON Series! The fuchsia one caught my eye at first sight and I could not stop thinking about it until I decided to get Jess to order together with me (HEH).

Now, I can pack everything in a bottle, with the individual compartments! The best part is that it looks good and cool and I have been getting a lot of questions from the gyms about where I get my bottle from. I also don't have to worry about losing the individual items in my bag because they are all attached now!

Get yours today at www.smartshakesg.com! Colours from the Neon series comes individually so you may share your order with your gym buddy or get more than 1 if you want to have them all for yourself!

Lucky for you, my readers and IG followers are all entitled to a 10% off till 31st Oct 2013 on all items except for the Jay Cutler 800ml bottle as it is already on sale. GET YOURS TODAY and hurry before the promo code expires! All you need to do is enter my promo code "limaran9911" into the 'Add special instructions for your order' box before you click 'Checkout'! Have fun!!

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Fitness & Nutrition: How important nutrition is

I took a long time to prepare this post because I have been contemplating posting this as it'll be a societal shock to our modern lifestyle and diet, and to many of you out there. The other reason for the delay was to carefully put all the technical terms into a simpler version so it'll be easier for everyone to understand.

Do bear with me on this post as I'll be stressing a lot on the most challenging part of your fitness journey AGAIN. I need to keep emphasising on the fact that nutrition should be the root and the foundation to your journey to perfecting health and fitness, well, not just that, but going slightly ahead, especially if you are a competitive athlete or sportsperson.

There is an apparent reason, to me, why the sports industry is not blooming and moving forward in Singapore. Yes, as you can guess right now, the reason is NUTRITION.

As you can see from the triangle above, this is the Crossfit Dietary Prescription (CDP). I guess some of you may have seen this, may have understood this, and some of you may think this is irrelevant because you don't crossfit. But hey, take a minute (or few) to read what I have to say because if you are disciplined enough to give it a try and spread the good news, maybe the sports industry, and even the SAF (Singapore Armed Force) in Singapore will see the enlightenment and improve the current sports and fitness education.

Today, I'll be attempting to simplify this prescription so this can apply to everyone and instill into your lifestyle.

Ever heard of 'You are what you eat!'? This is the summary of CDP. Your nutrition is the foundation and will break or make you in your fitness journey. A good and well-balanced diet will ensure increment in health, energy and sense of well-being; it is also the deciding factor  of whether your body is reducing fats, building quality muscles and optimising performance in and out of the gym.

Sport - performance

Strength training (aka weight-lifting) - control of external weight

Gymnastics - control of our body in space

Metabolic conditioning - cardio/respiratory

Nutrition - solid molecular foundation

I do not even have to elaborate and tell you more about the other 4 factors if you don't know how to keep your nutrition in check. SO here goes:

Macronutrients - what I have been referring to as macros, are your protein, carbohydrates and fats. Micronutrients, as you may guess, are then vitamins and minerals. Carbohydrates affects the production of hormone insulin, that derives energy from your bloodstream in your cells to be used as fuel. Though it is an essential in the body, too much of carbohydrates in your body will result in diabetes type II, coronary heart disease, depression, obesity, etc. Protein, goes the same way as carbs, will result in fat storage if consumed in excess, however if in deficiency, will break down muscles to make up for the necessary protein requirement. Fats are then your optimal energy source and it contains almost twice the amount of carbs and protein. Of course I'm referring to good fats such as nuts, seeds, fish and avocado.

So where am I deriving at exactly? 

I'm trying to encourage and promote a diet that is a combination of 2 individual popular diets and one that you can keep and instill into a lifestyle, that will ultimately increase your performance in your sport, in the army, or even, in your pursuit of health and fitness for life.

Diet 1: Paleo Diet

Paleolithic diet is all about meat, seeds, nuts, vegetables, very minimal starch and NO sugar. YES, you read me right, NO SUGAR! Alot of crossfit athletes don't consume sugar AT ALL, which means they even avoid fruits that are high in sugar. It's really up to you though, I personally feel that as long as you don't go overboard with the grapes, bananas, mangoes and cherries, a little won't kill but hey, #YOLO! You know what your body needs and wants.

Diet 2: Zone Diet

The Zone diet emphasises on both the quality and quantity of your macros - calorie counting, which everyone irks. 

To optimise performance, you will need a mixture of both diets (sounds complicated and difficult uh?).

Bottomline - your diet should consist of more lean meats, vegetables, seeds, nuts, some fruits, little starch and NO SUGAR. Also, you need to keep the intake of your macros to support your workout, not your body fat. WHICH MEANS, you don't eat less because you want to lose weight, you cut on what you eat for a purpose to maximise your performance in the gym, sport or even in the armed forces. The CDP recommends 30% of your diet to consist of lean protein, 40% low-glycemic carbs (low GI foods) and 30% of good/monosaturated fats.

So then, how do you know much much to eat for each meal? Remember I mentioned before, that your different body type will determine how you should be eating? There you go..

The CDP has defined that:

1 block of protein = 7 grams of protein (cooked)

1 block of carbs = 9 grams of carbs

1 block of fats = 1.5 grams of fats

Now look at the table below and you will be able to find out how many blocks are recommended for you on the different meals. 

Give it a try if you are game for it, and have the plans to optimize your performance in the gym, as a professional athlete or sportsperson. I hope I managed to deliver my message well. Do come back to me if you have burning questions about CDP. Start cutting out SUAGRS from your diet everyone!

To those who have emailed me and waiting for my reply, kindly be patient with me, I'll definitely get back to you ASAP! Keep those emails coming in! (=

One of the nights while I was marinating my food for easy cooking - used cajun & ginger ground

Yay, finally got a photo taken with Zheng ge ping!

Saturdays with LOVE

Have a great week ahead everyone! I'll be back with the recipe I promised to share! (=

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