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Health benefits of chocolate, how to eat fit on the go in summer, tips to exercise at home

by | Nutrition, Podcast

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1:44 Chocolate & health

13:20 I’d really like to pack something to take with me so I can work out in the heat and keep fit. Do you have recipes that can be eaten anywhere without heating up?

20:12 How to exercise at home? At home full body workout tips

How to eat in the summer when on the go?

Hi, I would like to ask you for some nutrition advice.

We train a lot during the winter and travel a lot during the summer. People treat us mostly with food like pastry, goulash, and soft drinks and I would really like to pack something with me to be able to work out in the heat and to stay fit.

Do you have any recipes that can be eaten anywhere without heating up? I was thinking hummus a million ways, veggies and what else…?

Recipes can be inspiring, but they box you into a “recipe” – they don’t encourage creative thinking unless you focus on it. For example, a recipe calls for rice with tofu in a sauce. Which is a fine recipe, but it’ll spoil in a few hours in the heat. You can use the same ingredients and bake it. It is actually a different recipe, a different meal, but it uses the same ingredients and it doesn’t go bad in the heat.

I would like to encourage you to look beyond recipes and learn how to put together ingredients. All you need is to be able to categorize foods into carbs, fats, or protein.Then you just put the ingredients together.

For example, you can take tofu, oats, and blueberries and make oatmeal, or baked oats, or protein bars.

Here are some tips to start with:

Dried, baked and canned foods can withstand summer heat and are also portable.

You can get vegetables and fruit almost anywhere during summer, so I’d not carry it with me. For example, my go-to travel food has always been oatmeal. I pack oats, protein powder and nuts/seeds. Just mix them up and pour water over them before eating. I also add fruit and vegetables that I get from a local grocery store.

Good bento boxes are essential for keeping food fresh without creating a mess while you travel.

My second preferred option is improvisation.

Learn to make a balanced meal and you won’t be dependent on recipes and you can improvise to taste.

Carbohydrates, fats, vegetables and fruit are easy to get at any shop along the way. Plant protein sources are the only obstacle. Protein powder, protein bars, texturized vegetable protein, baked tofu or even canned legumes will do the trick here.

How to exercise at home?

I would need a YouTube channel, according to which videos I will be able to work out well with my body weight at home, ideally full-body. I have an hour in the morning to do it before the kid gets up

I don’t have a specific YouTube channel because I don’t workout following videos. I watch the videos for form and exercise techniques.

Most of the videos are yoga focused, stretching focused, or are high-intensity circuit workouts.

What would be ideal for you depends on your goals. If you want to get better at running then you need to run. If you want to lose weight or tone and strengthen your body, build muscle or stay generally fit, full-body workouts at home are probably the better choice.

The goal of exercise is to give your body a stimulus, not to burn calories. In the case of resistance exercise, it is strength development, explosive power or muscle building. In the case of circuit training, it’s developing conditioning (cardiovascular fitness).

You can use the same exact exercises, but how you do them makes a difference.

I will use squats as an example.

  • Slow squats that feel really hard, maybe with added weight, or single-leg squats develop strength and grow muscle.
  • Jump squats, focusing on exploding up as much as possible develop power.
  • Doing squats for a minute is a cardio workout.

There is some overlap between these adaptations, but if you want to tone your body, focus on strength. In other words, don’t focus on sweating and getting your heart rate up or feeling your muscles burn and doing tens or hundreds of repetitions with a short pause, below two minutes in between sets. That’s cardio even if you use weights.

I recommend dumbbells at home, or at least a TRX suspension system and resistance bands.

How often?

You can do more than enough in an hour. If you have a very busy life, even 15 minutes a day can be enough as we discussed in the podcast episode Your complete guide to exercising smart with K. Aleisha Fetters, MS, CSCS

I used http://www.maxcapacitytraining.com/ in the beginning, which takes about 20 minutes and focuses on developing strength with your own body.

For most people, I would recommend full body strength training 2-3 times a week and in between these workouts stay active and possibly add cardio.

  • Book: Convict Conditioning will guide you using the simple body movements that you can progress from a total beginner to elite athlete.
  • TRX
  • Resistance bands

Sources

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