Why sleep is so important

During my research about muscle growth, I stumbled upon a very old article from 1968 about the presence of the growth hormone during your sleep. It is said often to me that rest is very important in order to stimulate muscle growth. I was wondering how this worked, and how sleep affects the growth of the muscles. And this article actually gave me some answers. 

The growth hormone

The growth hormone stimulates, among others, the growth of cells and the regeneration of cells. This thus has an effect on your muscle growth. This is why taking in extra growth hormone is popular by some athletes. However, there is no scientific evidence that taking in extra growth hormone improves strength and/or speed. But, research did show improved lean muscle, decrease of fat, and more muscle mass as a result of the growth hormone. Also it showed that the use of the growth hormone stimulates storage of water in your body. So, the growth hormone could assist in moving fluids away from fat towards your muscles. Lucky us, that our body provides us with this great hormone!

The growth hormone during sleep

The natural production of growth hormone is highest in stage 2 and 3 of your non-REM sleep. Non-REM sleep stands for non Rapid Eye Movement sleep and usually is 80% of your sleep time. Non-Rem sleep has four stages of which stage 1 is very light sleep and stage 4 is very deep sleep. Stage 2 is a period of light sleep, where you have periods of muscle flexion and relaxation. This is the stage that the body is preparing to go into deep sleep. When you wake up and you are a bit disoriented, you usually just woke up from sleep stage 3 or 4. 

Go to bed in time!

In the graph below, you can see on top the stages of sleep and the according lever of growth hormone in each stage as the sleep continues. At 11PM you can see the largest peak in the natural production of the growth hormone. At his time, the person is in deep sleep as you can see (stage 4). Another peak can be observed at 2.30AM. Again at this time the person is in deep sleep (stage 3). This graph shows that at the beginning of your sleep, when you are in deep sleep, the production of the growth hormone is greatest!

For contrast, the graph below shows the production of the growth hormone for a person that goes to bed late (delayed sleep). In the graph you can see that production of growth hormone is very limited over the whole night. Even though this person does reach the deep sleep stage (stage 3), it does not product much growth hormone. This shows that going to bed early stimulates the production of the growth hormone to a greater extend! So, up to bed your go! 

Good night!

Source: Takahashi, Y., Kirnis, D.M., Daughaday, W.H., 1968. Growth Hornone Secretion during Sleep. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 47. pp 2079-2090

A weekend away: Preparation is key!

Delicious meals during my weekend away! Chicken salad and asparagus.

This weekend a great time in a bungalow park! Of course I tried to stick to my training scheme and clean and healthy food. Again, it showed preparation is key!

I made sure I had enough healthy food packed with me in order to survive the weekend. I took ingredients for my breakfast and to make a nice tuna salad. I packed enough protein powder, almond milk and eggs.

It’s all about healthy choices.

During the weekend I had plenty of fun swimming, shopping, and relaxing. When I was on the way I always carried a banana and a protein bar in case we didn’t stop for something to eat. We also went out for lunch and diner. For lunch I ordered a ‘Farmers Omelette, eggs, mushrooms, ham, bacon, tomato’s, bell peppers and cheese served with a side salad. Although the dish was high in fats, it was low in carbs and high in protein.

For diner I ordered the local dish asparagus with ham, which was delicious. This dish is pretty clean from itself existing of just the cooked vegetables, ham and herbs from the oven. Also, the next day I enjoyed a delicious chicken salad!

Be creative

Saturday was cardio day, so I took my running gear with park. In the morning that I went running I came across a kids’ playing area. There I did some more exercises like burpees, Bulgarian lunches, squats, and upside down abs workout on the climbing rack. Its fun working out outside and be creative! You can workout with almost anything. Try it!

Creative abs workout at the Playground

Fist things first; The magic 4: training

Get it done B*tch!

Go to the gym, work out, and see results!

When you want to become fit, you have to work for it! The fist step is: find a gym that suits you! I used to train at one of the large commercial trainings centres. Training there was fine, although during peak times is was vey busy and it was like doing the chair dance with others! The equipment was sufficient for me to train every body part and there were plenty of cardio machines. During my search for a coach I came across a local fitness centre, about 10 minutes biking from my house. This training enter has a no-nonsense attitude and had way more unique equipment than at the commercial gym. It felt good to work out there.  That’s where you can find me now, almost every day!

The second step is: go to the gym! When you find the gym that suits you and where you feel good at, you should go there! I personally go to the gym almost 6 days a week. I do weight training 3 times a week and cardio 3 times a week as well. When it is good wheatear I love to do my cardio sessions outside though. Find your own motivation to go to the gym, get inspiration and get it done! It might also help to go to the gym with a training partner. This person should be as motivated as you though, so you could go to the gym together and support each other.

Here you see the typical difference between a marathon
athletes and a sprinter. The sprinter has visible more
muscle development. Training type matters!

The third step is: match your training schedule with your goals! I love the classic example of sprinters and marathon runners. Both sports are amazing and require dedication and commitment. However, the looks of both athletes differ greatly. Marathon runners are very slim and showing few muscles, while sprinters are shredded with muscle development. This example shows how different trainings affect your body differently. Important is to balance weights training and cardio.

Weight training

Like I mentioned I do weight training 3 times a week. I do a full body workout; this means I work all muscle groups during my workout. Another option is to do different body parts on different days. For example, 1 day leg day, 1 day back and triceps, 1 day chest and shoulders. When working out, choose to do the larger muscles (quads, chest, back, shoulders, hamstrings) first, and that one or more smaller muscles (triceps, bicep, calves, forearms, traps). This is recommended because it is mostly the exhausted smaller muscles holding you back doing exercises.

Cardio

I try to keep my cardio and weight trainings separate. If you don’t have the time or opportunity to do that, you can also choose to do your cardio workout after you weight training. It is better to do this afterwards, so you can use your power at the start of the workout for your weight training. For cardio, you could do anything, like running, biking, cross trainer etc.  I perform a short and steady high intensity cardio workout 2 times a week. I prefer the bicycle because it is less destructive for the joints. The other time I like to do sprints outside. Near my house there is a 100 meter training track where I like to go run with friends. This is an interval training (high intensity for 10-60seconds and moderate intensity 30-60seconds). I usually try to keep my cardio sessions short and intense for about 20-30 min (excluding warming up and cooling down). 

Set your goals, plan your trainings, and get it done B*tch! 

Meal prep: 'Say what?'

Prepare healthy meals for the whole week! 

Sticking to a strict eating scheme makes it soo much easier when you always have a ready-made meal you can grap out of the fridge when it is time to eat!  It helps me in order not to grap easy, processed food, but instead a healthy meal, I already prepared. I eat about 6 times a day, small potions of clean food. Imagine I would need to stand in the kitchen 6 times a day to prepare all these meals! No way! To solution: Meal prep! 

This week I made nice dishes with chicken and veggies.
Stay tuned for the healthy recipes!

Meal prep stands for meal preparation. I basically means that you prepare all your meals you eat for a certain number of days. I usually do my meal prep on sunday evenings or monday mornings. Than I prepare my meals for the whole workweek, to 5 days. At one day, I eat 'diner-food' twice. Once around lunch time and once 2 hours before I hit the gym. The other meals consist of oatmeal, fruit, quark, protein shakes, eggs, smoked chicken, and quick veggies (baby tomatoes and- cucumbers). These latter meals I usually prepare in the morning and just wrap them up in order to take with me that day. This means I will have to prepare 2 'diner-like' meals for 5 days, = 10 meals in total.

When doing meal prep, I usually don't make 10 different dishes. I prefer to make 2-3 different types of dishes. This week I prepared Chicken from the oven, sautéed with spicy herbs, and mixed veggies including eggplant, bell pepper, and onions dressed with asparagus. The second dish I made is Chicken from the oven with mustard herbs and pepper, green beans and broccoli. I also made a chicken salad, with chicken, bell pepper, cucumber, and spring onions. I added brown rice for 3 dishes. Thus, mainly chicken this week! I will post these simple, clean recipes during this week!

This is my fridge, before meal prep and after meal prep.
It is stuffed with healthy, ready-to-go meals!

After preparing you let the disches cool down and put them in small containers. You can keep them 3-4 days in the fridge. If you want to store them for a longer period, you can also put them in the freezer. Then you take them out of the freezer the night before eating them, and store them in the fridge. Some people do not like to eat food 'from yesterday' out of the fridge. I don't mind it; for some meals it even taste better, because the herbs got into your dish better and it is more tasty! Also it has the big advantage that I do not have to cook every day. Don't get me wrong, I like cooking, but only when I have the time for it and can make nice culinary dishes. So, meal prep, the ideal solution to eat healthy!

Enjoy!

Recipe for a delicious summer salmon salad

This is a recipe I love to make during warmer days. The salad is full of vitamins, low in carbs, medium in protein because of the added cottage cheese, and relatively high in good fats because of the salmon and avocado. 

Ingredients for about 3-4 portions:

• 300g smoked salmon 
• 4 tomatoes
• 1 cucumber
• 2 bell pepers
• 1/2 bag of pre-washed mixed salad
• 6 green asparagus
• 1 avocado
• 4 spoons of cottage cheese
• 2 tablespoons of capers
• 6 dried tomatoes (not in oil)
• 1 small hand of pumpkin seeds
• Small bush of parsley
• 2 bulbs of garlic
• limejuice
• Fresh pepper

Method

1. Wash the asparagus and cut off the white back-end (the tail) of the vegetable. Cook the asparagus shortly for about 3-4 minutes in a pan. Take them out and let them cool down and drie on a cold plate. 
2. Cut the salmon in thin small slices and sprinkle with lemon juice and pepper to your taste. In some stores you can also buy pre-cut salmon, so you don't have to cut yourself anymore.
3. Cut the fresh tomatoes, dried tomatoes, cucumber and bell peppers in the shape you like. Also cut up the parsley and garlic. Peel the avocado, slice in half and take out the seed. Than slice the avocado in four pieces. 
4. Put all ingredients, but the avocado, in a large bowl and mix it up. Serve the avocado pieces on the side. 
5. Enjoy! :)

Let me know how you liked the salad or if you added any extra ingredients of changed something about the method!

First things first; the magic 4: Mental

Mental health and motivation is priority

If something is very important to keep you going, it is mental health! In this case, with mental health I mean general well-being, feeling good, and being motivated to reach your goals. It sound very obvious, but we are not always standing still by the fact that your well-being effects everything you do in life. For one moment, try to stand still what drives you in life. What makes you who you are, and what do you want to become in the future? What is your goal? When defining your goal, try to make your goal SMART: make it specific, make sure you can measure your progression, and specifically: make it realistic. Nothing is more demotivating that setting goals you will never be able to reach. In my case my goal is to participate in a body-fitness competition. Then the question remains how to complete the journey and reach the goal?

Start diggin'

This is my challenge. What is yours?

The first step is to find out what really motivates you to achieve your goals. Try to dig deep and reason solid, so that the reasons are very clear for you and you can fall back on these reasons during moments when you are less motivated. For example, if you goal is to loose weight there could be several reasons for this. The reason: 'because it is pretty', probably won't help to motivate you during hard times. Therefore you should try to find more deep motivators. For example, my reasons to participate in a fitness competition are to find out what my body is capable of and how disciplined I can work on myself. I am eager to find out the maximum results I can get with training and clean eating. My aim is to get as fit as possible in a natural way. I like to challenge myself. Find out what really motivates you. 

Motivators

Next to find internal motivation, there is so much motivation to find elsewhere. My main motivator is the mirror. I love te see changes in my body and the pay-off for all the hard work. Also, several persons around me can give me motivation to achieve my goal. Start sharing your goals with people around you and share updates about achievements helps a lot. Next to that, I personally get a lot of motivation from being in the gym and surround myself with people with similar goals. When looking around me and seeing how others are working and making process, I always try to learn and grow from them. Besides these motivators, I am always looking for new sources of information, motivation and inspiration on the Internet. I usually hit the 'follow' button for any FB sites or blogs that are interesting to follow for fitness of food related information. I try to get involved in online discussion about topics that interest me. Several of my fav's websites are FitnessRx for Women and Muscle and fitness. Also Youtube you can be overwhelmed with motivational video clips. This is one of my favourites: 

To sum up:

1. Set your goals
2. Start digging and find out your drivers of the goals
3. Find motivation inside yourself, and external motivators
4. Get it done, B*tch!

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@ The Market

Had a great saturday morning at the market! 

Fruits and veggies

Eating healthy does not need to be super expensive. That is why I try to do most of my groceries at the local market when possible. Also this Saturday I went to the market to buy fruit, vegetables, and nuts. When going to the market, try to walk around first to compare the prices and the quality of the products being sold. Often, at the beginning of the market, products tend to be more expensive that further down the market. Try to pick your own pieces of fruits and vegetables so you can pick out the best looking ones!

Nuts, dried fruits and herbs

One of my favourite stands at the market is a vegetables and fruit stand where the products are pre-packed in portions in a bag. Each bag is between one and two Euros's. From experience I know the products are very good quality most of the time. For carbs, I love sweet potatoes. At the market you can find many tropical stands selling sweet potato's. Try it!

Another stand I always go to is the nut's stand. They have all types of nuts, olives, dried fruit, and also 3 bushes of fresh mint for only One Euro. Very refreshing to make your own mint thee! I love the almonds and dried apricots they sell!

The result

 In total I bought:

- 3 cucumber

- Tomatoes

- Bag of bell peppers

- Bag of zucchini 

- 2 brocolli

- 2 bushes spring onions

- 2 bushes asparagus

- Sweet potato

- Almonds

- Dades

Stay tuned to see what kind of dishes I will make with it! 

First things first; the magic 4: Food

When you want to see real results in your  body, you always need to keep in mind the magic 4! 

1: Food, 2: Training, 3: Rest, and 4:Mental health. I will start telling you more about these magic 4 during my following posts. Lets's start with number one! Food! I love food!

Food is the basis for your energy. When eating right you can have enough energy for the full day and for a hardcore training, without feeling hungry or starving yourself. Like I said, I love food, I love to eat, and so I do! It is important to know what you are eating, what the ingredients and nutritients are. Take a look at the labels on the products, the nutritional values and the ingredients. Try to avoid products with many ingredients, these are often less healthy, and avoid E-numbers where possible. Like many say: Knowledge is power. That also the case with food. 

Macronutrients

The important components in your food to take an extra look at are the macronutients: protein (muscle building), carbs (short term energy), and fat (long term energy and vitality). The composition of the macronutrients should be balanced according to your needs of that day. When building muscle, intake of proteins should be high (I take in many proteins every day). When having a hard workout that day, you want to take in more carbs than on a rest day because you use more energy. 

I get get proteins mostly from shakes, chicken filet, red meat and eggs. When taking in carbs I limit myself to complex carbs; these take longer to digest and will not give me a sugar-dip after consuming. I usually begin my mornings with oatmeal, left to soak overnight with non-fat curd in the fridge. Then before and ofter my weight training I eat sweet potato, brown rice or spelt bread. Fat's I consume by eating nuts (mostly almonds), avocado, and fat fish like salmon. 

Calories

Next to the macronutrients, I keep an eye on the calories I consume. This enables me to make the right proportions of food I eat at each moment of the day. The rule for calories is simple: If you want to loose weight, take in less calories then you use; if you want to gain weight, take in more calories than you use that day. It requires trial and error and see what works for you. 

Eating moments

I eat 6 - 8x a day, so I need to make sure each meal is the right size in order not to over eat. The reason I eat so many times per day is because it keeps my digestion high, so I burn more during the day. Sometimes it is difficult to eat so often because of constraints you face during your daily life. You are ate work, at school, at a client, and people look at you; are you eating, AGAIN? Just try to plan you eating moments right and always have something to eat with your. I prefer to prepare all my food for the week at monday evening and store it in the fridge. I'm always prepared. 

Cheat day

One of my favourites: 1x a week it is cheat day. On this day I can have a 'treat'  for myself. This keeps me motivated to really stick to my diet during the week and than, on Sunday, I can have a nice cheatmeal. I like pizza, apple pie, om my mom's made cookies! I usually try to stick with once cheatmeal, and not a full cheat day, because I still have some work on my body. Love this day!

So.. That were some basics about food and you gained some insight how I deal with you. I hope it helps and please share your thoughts and experiences! There is so much more about food and there definitely will be more posts about this topic! This was it for now, have a healthy day!!

The start!

Mission:  I will work it, I will push myself to the limit, I will get it done!

Goal: Body-Fitness competition. 

I have been working out with weights since my exam period during Spring 2013. When training almost everyday with heavy weights,  and clean eating, I saw quick results. My body changed, and it happened faster than I thought. I love this feeling, I love to see the changes of my body! Over the summer I still kept improving and improving. Fairly ripped, fat percentage of less that 18% (which resulted in my case in a 6-pack) and felling very fit and energetic.

When the new trimester of my Master studies started in Fall, I found it more difficult to stick to my training schedule and to eat clean. There were a lot of socials organised where we went out for diner or drinks. It is hard to say no to such occasions. Slowly, I saw my body weakening, and turning gradually back to it's 'old' shape. This did not improve my slight Winter-depression, I usually experience during the cold and dark days. When I looked back at the pictures on my Ipad I made of my progression during that summer, I got to motivation back again to go training and eating clean. But this time, I decided to go hard! No excuses, just get it done, b*tch, I said to myself! And that is when I decided to compete in a Body-fitness competition.