Training Tip Tuesday: Muscle Confusion

Most of us get in a rut with our exercise.  We do the same thing repeatedly.  This can obstruct our goals of increasing fitness or losing weight, due to a little phenomenon called "muscle memory".  Basically, when we do things over and over our muscles get trained to do them more efficiently.  Sounds good, right?  Yes, if you're training for a marathon or long bike ride.  When your muscles are efficient they use less energy, or calories, to do said exercise.  But for weight loss and muscle gain,
we want more!

What we want is for our muscles to work hard and burn more calories.  The way we can get this is by creating "muscle confusion".  This means keeping our muscles on their toes! It helps us avoid a fitness plateau, where we stop gaining strength or losing weight.

Some common ways to achieve muscle confusion are HIITs, cross-training, and bricks.

HIITs are High Intensity Interval Training.  It's just what it sounds like.  High intensity in short duration.  They involve every muscle group and keep your muscles doing different actions.

Cross-training would be mixing different activities on different days.  Running or walking, bike riding, HIIT, weight training, swimming, roller blading, trampoline jumping, basketball, soccer, etc. This ensures that we strengthen all our muscles including our lateral-movement muscles (important for women in avoiding injury), our core, our arms, backs, etc.

Bricks are usually what triathletes do.  It means doing 2-3 different exercises in one session.  The three disciplines are swimming, biking, and running.  The toughest is to go from a bike ride to a run, which is the order of events in a triathlon.  Even though running and biking are forward motion leg-centric disciplines they use vastly different movements.  When you start running after a bike ride, your legs really do feel like bricks!

From this we can learn that the best way to avoid efficient low calorie burn movement, and the best way to burn lots of calories is to create muscle confusion.

During your workout hour, mix it up by doing a combination of two different exercises;

Walk + 15 min squats and arm presses

Run + jumping jacks and plank

Bike + 15 min running

HIIT + 15 min Yoga

These are a few examples but the sky's the limit!  If you have 30 minutes, do 15+15, and so forth.  Play with your kids, shoot hoops with your hubby, climb on the jungle gym, do the monkey bars, have a family dance party.  Fitness and muscle confusion doesn't have to happen only with typical "exercise" disciplines.

Confuse those muscles today, and get your max calorie burn for your time!

Make It Monday: Paleo Poppyseed Muffins & A Healthy Dinner

Today on the docket are two recipes.  One for grain-free & naturally sweetened muffins and the other a super simple healthy dinner idea from the group.

Katrina sent me this fantastic easy dinner idea:

1 Costco Turkey Burger, broiled or grilled

1 cup steamed broccoli

Add a small red potato, 1 cup sweet potato, or 1/2 cup brown rice to make it luxuriously yummy!

       

The nutrition info for the turkey burger puts it at 200 calories it has a monumental 35 grams of protein!  That's worth every bite!  Turkey is a great low-fat high-protein meat.  Thanks, Katrina!

The other recipe is one I found from the blog Civilized Caveman Cooking.  It's a blog dedicated to Paleo eating.  I got a hankering for poppyseed muffins after I made Challa bread, sprinkled with poppyseeds for dinner last night.

Without going into huge detail, Paleo is a hunter/gatherer way of eating, avoiding agricultural products & domesticated animal products.  The diet is heavy on animal protein, vegetables & fruits. There are many levels of Paleo, and I like some recipes for their lack of grains.  There are lots of Paleo desserts that look amazing. You can read more about Paleo on Diane Sanfilippo's website Balanced Bites, or read her outstanding book "Practical Paleo", found here.  Paleo diets in various forms are used to help solve health problems like diabetes, IBS, auto-immune disorders, and more. 

For baked goods Paleo recipes use almond flour or coconut flour.   Alternative flours lack gluten, which is what makes bread chewy and helps them rise.  So baking with almond or coconut flour results in a slightly different texture and crumb than you're used to.  Paleo baked goods typically have more protein than the usual, and while these flours are low in carbs, they are high in fats, albeit healthy ones. So just like always, moderation is key!

You can find the recipe for the Paleo Lemon Poppyseed Muffins I made today here, or below.  (And I'm still loving the date bites from last week.  So satisfying!)  As a testament to my weird pursuit of health foods of all types I had all the ingredients on hand.  You can find everything you need at your local store, usually in the health food aisle.

Ingredients

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

• 2 cups almond flour (185 grams)
• 3/4 cup coconut flour (90 grams)
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tsp baking soda (3 grams)
• 2/3 cup raw honey, melted
• 2/3 cup coconut oil, melted
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons unsweetened full-fat coconut milk
• 1-2 teaspoons pure lemon extract
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (176 Celsius).
2. Sift almond flour, coconut flour, sea salt and baking soda in a large mixing bowl and stir with a whisk to combine.
3. Place oil and honey in the bowl of a food processor and process for 2 minutes.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each addition.
5. Add coconut milk, lemon extract, and lemon zest, and poppy seeds. Continue to process until well combined.
6. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients and thoroughly combine using a wooden spoon until smooth
7. Pour batter into muffin liners in a muffin pan and bake for 20 minutes
8. Remove from the oven, remove from the pan and let cool

This week I'm starting my 100-mile Little Red Riding Hood training in earnest. Time to commit!  You can read more about the non-competitive women-only Little Red 2015 event here.  I feel really strong with all the cross-training I've done, even though I haven't devoted a ton of time to the bike.  My neck and sit-bones are what need a lot of conditioning!  This week I'm looking at 5 hours on the bike, and 3 hours of cross training.  I couldn't find my training schedule for last year (boo), which was ideal and put me it terrific condition for the event, so I tried to recreate it as closely as possible.

The trick with training and trying to lose weight is to time my meals to fuel me throughout my workout, and to have a high-quality recovery meal after, particularly after long rides.  Wish me luck!  When I train like this I just start eating everything in sight!  The Summer Slim Down has definitely taught me some great skills in choosing healthier foods, rather than digging in for a handful of cold cereal 3 times in the afternoon.   

I had a cheat WEEKEND, and it was horrible!  I was gassy, bloated, lethargic, had a stomach ache, and a sore tongue.  Sugar and those darn refined grains are not all they're cracked up to be!  I really savored my eggs+cottage cheese+veggies & my whole grain+oat pancake this morning.  And a good helping of my daily water to wash it all down.  I feel better already!

So, what's on your agenda for the week?  Hopefully some healthy menu planning and a bunch of fun exercise!

Have a happy Monday and get back on that wagon!