17 ways to Fight Fat

EAT MORE FREQUENTLY.
Eating 5-6 small meals a day as opposed to “three squares” causes your metabolism to work constantly. Eating larger meals, however, slows your metabolism and forces leftover calories to be stored as fat.

GET LEAFY.
Those who eat a salad before dinner tend to consume less calories overall during dinner. But don’t sabotage yourself - stay away from high-fat dressings like ranch, blue cheese and Caesar.

EAT PROTEIN.
Since muscle-building is the fastest route to slim down, make sure your protein consumption is enough to keep up with your weight training. Eat too little and your gains could be slower. Get 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day to help your muscle gains along. Use protein bars and shakes to supplement your whole-food consumption and stave off cravings.

CARB SMART.
Keep your carbohydrates low to moderate when trying to lose weight. If you rotate low- and high-carb days, you’ll be able to keep your energy levels up while running a caloric deficit. Good, clean, fibre-rich carbs include oats, potatoes, rice and whole-grain bread. Also, limit high-carb drinks like fruit juice to post workout, when your body needs carbs to speed recovery.

CUT OUT FIZZY DRINKS.
Instead, rely on water. If you drink one can of fizzy drink a day, you’re adding 1,750 calories per week to your diet. Also, studies have shown that those who regularly consume diet sodas tend to gain weight in the long run because of over-indulgences elsewhere.

SKIP HAPPY HOUR.
Alcohol consumption can temporarily blunt testosterone levels, hindering muscle repair and growth and blunting sexual drive. Also, the calories from alcoholic beverages - in the neighbourhood of 100-200 each without cocktail mixers - add up faster than you may think.

SLOW DOWN, TURBO!
Successful dieters and fitness buffs will tell you that fast eating and body fat go hand in hand because you end up overeating. It takes about 10 minutes for the food in your stomach to signal your brain that you’ve eaten enough.

OPERATION DINNER OUT.
Be diligent when ordering in a restaurant. Ask to have your meats grilled without oil or grease. Request steamed vegetables with no butter. Get a salad (no cheese) with either low-fat dressing or vinaigrette.

CALORIES OUT!
The goal in any fat- or weight-loss program should be to burn more calories than you consume. Aim to cut total calorie consumption by about 250 calories per day. That means you’ll have to figure out how many calories you eat in a normal day. The maths will pay big dividends later.

AVOID SIMPLE SUGARS.
Too much sugar in your diet can wreak havoc on your metabolism by spiking your insulin response and promoting the accumulation of body fat. Immediately after exercise, however, is an ideal time to ingest simple sugars; otherwise, steer clear.

TIMED CONSUMPTION.
When you eat is just as important as what you eat. Eat two-thirds of your daily calories before dinner to avoid overeating later.

EAT MORE FIBRE.
Fibre, both soluble and insoluble, is essential to health and helps decrease body fat. Adults should consume 35-40 grams of fibre per day, with about one-third coming from insoluble fibrous sources. Along with fibre-rich whole grains, consume large amounts of fibrous vegetables, such as broccoli, to attain your daily intake and promote satiety.

PREPARE.
If your workplace serves nothing healthy, take food or snacks along with you.

GET YOLKED.
Eating eggs for breakfast was found to reduce hunger and food intake for up to 24 hours.

DON’T BE SALTY.
Excess sodium consumption can make you look softer and cause you to burn less fat. To help you look leaner and strip sodium from your diet, drink more water, cut back on highly processed foods and use potassium chloride to season your foods.

GOT MILK?
Individuals who consumed high levels of dietary calcium in a 24-hour period had higher rates of fat oxidation that day than those who consumed lesser amounts. So stock up on low-fat versions of cheese, milk and yogurt; if you’re lactose intolerant, choose dark-green leafy vegetables, legumes and almonds.

GO NUTS!
Looking for a healthy snack? Eating a handful of almonds helped test subjects lose 62% more weight, 56% more fat and 50% more from their waistline after 24 weeks compared to those who followed the same diet without almonds.

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The GTS is designed to facilitate full body workouts, without the use of any additional accessories.

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Sexuality and Power: Learn 6 Ways Body Image Affects Us

Are you satisfied with your body?

Wow, that question opens a big can of worms. If you're seriously into fitness, the answer "no, I'm not satisfied" may come more easily as most in this category accept constructive criticism as healthy and necessary to goal attainment of a more perfect body.

Others, however, may feel differently and may either shy away from critical physical assessments or may simply say they accept themselves as they are. However, some recent research suggests something much deeper going on.

We judge our bodies mostly by how we think we're viewed by the opposite sex, according to several recent studies. And although several factors contribute to our body self-image, foremost is the desire for power over the opposite sex. Following are six ways body image can affect us according to one survey:

1) Size - Men perceive large physical size as powerful, while women see being smaller and more petite as better for obtaining power and influence over the opposite sex.

2) Satisfaction - Men generally are more satisfied with their appearance and see themselves as attractive to women, even when they're not in great shape, while women were generally less satisfied with their appearance and desiring to improve it to gain power over men.

3) Social Pressure - Women feel social pressure to look attractive in order to gain power more than men do as popular culture tends to focus more on glorification of the perfect female body and appearance.

4) Motivation - Women are generally more motivated to change their appearance by what men think, while men are more motivated by what they think of themselves, suggesting that men tend to already see themselves with the inherent upper hand.

5) Height - Both men and women agree that the man should be taller than the woman in a relationship, and that the reverse has a negative impact on the relationship's power structure, i.e. both the taller woman and the shorter man would have less power over the opposite sex.

6) Physical Standards - Women are generally less concerned about physicality and more concerned about femininity as a power lever over the opposite sex, while men were more concerned a strong physical appearance and overall presence.

Agree or disagree?

7 Reasons Why Workouts Fail You

While literally millions of people workout, very few realize true workout success. Most dabble in the gym on and off, never getting results. They quit working out, usually under a myriad of excuses along the lines of being too busy or of disappointment that "they're just not seeing results".

Below are seven common reasons why workouts fail:

1) No clear goals -

If you can't measure it you can't manage it. Too many people head into the gym with either no thought of what they're trying to accomplish or vague goals of "losing weight" and "toning up".

What to do:

Be specific and write it down. If the goal is weight loss or body fat loss, identify how many pounds or the target weight, the time element, and what you'll do every day to make it happen. If it's muscle gain, identify things like desired bicep and chest measurements or one-rep max increases.

2) Motivation is missing -

Motivation has two key elements:

a) possessing a goal that is deeply meaningful to you, and

b) feeling mostly in control of the outcome.

If motivation is missing from your workouts, examine these two factors and identify what's missing. Why do you care about your goals? Do you feel you can make them happen or do you need help?

What to do:

Take stock of why you started working out and make sure the cause matters to you, and especially that you're doing it for yourself and not because someone else thinks you should.

Also, if you feel frustrated or even helpless about your ability to achieve the desired workout outcome, get help from a personal trainer and/or a nutritionist.

3) Fear of discomfort -

Let's face it, success in transforming your body requires some discomfort. This can be pushing weights until your muscles fail, upping cardio to uncharted heart rate territory, and dieting when the body tells you it must eat.

Many people fail in their workouts for the simple reason that they can't overcome discomfort.

What to do:

Discomfort is only a state of mind. Learn to recognize discomfort as only a mental barrier to your goal. Love your goal more than you dislike the discomfort.

4) Workout uncertainty -

In sports they say that a cloudy head makes for slow feet. With working out, especially in a gym, uncertainty about what exercise to do and about proper form can result in a tentative approach that lacks the intensity required for improvement and progression toward a goal.

What to do:

Don't go it alone, get the help of a professional trainer and then become a student of how to work out. Like anything else, the more you study it, understand it, and practice it, the better you'll become at it and the faster you'll improve. This usually results in increased enjoyment too.

5) No passion for results -

High achievers in the gym get jacked up about results that can be in the form of increased muscle strength, increased muscle size, and increased muscle endurance. Those that fail in the gym usually lack a vision of their future physical states and a burning desire to realize positive change

What to do:

Visual imagery can be a very powerful force. Look at fitness magazines or fitness sites and find examples of what you want to look like. One great site for this is BodySpace on Bodybuilding.com. Learn what it takes to achieve the look you're after, visualize yourself looking like that and then only do things that will get you there.

6) Missing the diet equation -

Whatever your reason for working out, you won't get there without the proper diet and nutrition. And absolutely don't make the mistake that "cardio" will effectively substitute for diet discipline because it won't. Depending on your goal you'll need a specific calorie target and the correct mix of lean protein, low-glycemic carbohydrates, and healthy fats.

What to do:

Study some good books on diet and nutrition, especially related to fitness. Better yet, to get jump started hire a nutritionist or a good personal trainer that can teach you the right ways to eat and strategies for managing you diet under the stress of every day life.

7) Making workouts drudgery instead of uplifting fun -

If it's not fun you won't do it. Too often people see their workouts as a kind of punishment for being out of shape, and that workouts are to be endured rather than celebrated.

What to do:

Make workouts your personal time to get away from life's stresses and to work up a great endorphin release. Workout in a place you like to be in. This could be in the gym or in the garage.

If you don't like your gym, shop around for one that feels like someplace you look forward to being at. View your workouts as a fun investment in yourself where you get to move closer to that future "you".

Lighten Up! Maximize Your Results Through Perfect Form, Not More Weight

With lifting, it's about how, not about how much....

We've all seen it, and guys are the worst, wildly swinging huge weights, bodies swaying all over the place, swayed back, half or even quarter reps, then banging the weights down hard, causing everyone in the gym to look over to see if an accident just occurred.

Yep, we're talking about what I call ego lifters. These are the guys who boost their self esteem and try to impress others by loading up as much weight as they can lift off the ground or off the rack, and then make a ridiculous mockery of themselves and the exercise they're trying to perform.

The whole intent of recreational weight lifting is to target specific muscles or muscle groups, to isolate them, and to make them work through their full range of motion to exhaustion that results in hypertrophy, or growth. To accomplish these goals we need to maximize the stress on our target muscles, getting the most possible from every single rep, and, like it or not, form is much more important than weight volume.

The important basics

When performing any given resistance training exercise, we basically have the following two muscle groups:

1) Prime Movers
2) Stabilizers

The prime movers are the muscles or muscle groups we're targeting for development, and the stabilizers are the muscles or muscle groups that hold everything else in place while we isolate the prime movers. A good example is the standing bicep curl because it's one of the most popular lifting exercises and also one of the most abused.

Clearly, in a bicep curl the bicep is our prime mover. The only intent of this exercise is to develop the bicep, which means it must be isolated, or more simply not receive help from any other source. This is much easier said than done, because our brain and our bodies are programmed only to achieve the end result, which is getting the weight from a low point to a higher point, and by nature we typically use our bodies as a system to get this done, using several muscle groups and also leveraging to get underneath the weight. To achieve muscle isolation we must re-program our body mechanics.

So first let's make an important distinction between isolation (or "iso") moves and compound moves.

In isolation moves we primarily target a single joint movement, and we isolate the muscle or muscles that move only that joint. So from our bicep example, we may think of the bicep as a single muscle, but it's actually a group of muscles that move the elbow joint to a closed position, like the quadriceps, a group of four leg muscles on the front thigh extending the leg at the knee. This helps us understand the role of "prime movers" by thinking of single joint movement.

Alternatively, compound moves involve several joints in a single movement, with the squat as a great example, involving joint movement of the knees, ankles, and hips, calling on all of the associated muscle groups that move those joints. In both isolation and in compound moves, we seek to isolate only the muscles in these joint movements as prime movers. It's the range of these prime movers that we're seeking to maximize throughout the full movement of the joint.

The important role of stabilizers

Think back to our bicep curl example. If we're to isolate the bicep complex, everything around it must be stable. And lifters must build form from the ground up just like golfers build their swing from the ground up, so with lifting it all starts with posture, balance, and core strength. To understand the importance of the ground up approach, try doing bicep curls with your back against a wall so that your body can't sway forward or backward. Notice how much harder this is. Without swaying momentum, the bicep becomes more isolated and must work harder, creating greater load and maximizing hypertrophy. Now stand away from the wall and do the curl, note the need for an upright posture, a balanced stance, and a strong core to keep from swaying. This is all part of the stabilization process.

In stabilizing, holding a strong core is critical, and we do this by pulling in our stomach and by squeezing our glutes together. This activates the torso core stabilizer muscles and will keep your body from moving at the waist and will also keep your spine and your back straight.

Now do the curl standing sideways next to a mirror and watch your elbow. Does it move forward and backward with each rep? If so, you need to engage your shoulder muscles to stabilize and stop the arm sway. Put a small piece of tape on your shirt at the bottom-most elbow position and watch to ensure the elbow does not move from this spot. If you've eliminated body sway and elbow movement, then you have successfully isolated the bicep complex and are maximizing muscle load with each rep.

Get your full range of motion and cadence

Another major sin we see created by ego lifters is limited range of motion. They load up with so much weight that their entire kinetic chain, much less their target muscles, can't handle the weight, and they compensate by shortening the muscle's range of motion, sometimes by over half. This misses the opportunity to develop the muscle's full strength and mobility potential. Worse yet, shortened reps lead to shortened muscles, creating imbalances that effect everything from symmetrical appearance to potentially causing injuries.

Additionally, ego lifters tend to rush their cadence and focus mostly on the reps concentric, or contracting portion. This leaves out two important aspects of the rep: the isometric portion where we freeze and hold the fully contracted muscle, and the eccentric portion, where the target muscle is used as brake against gravity. All three repetition aspects best mimic real life application and, when used in resistance training, can best maximize the muscle-building potential of each rep. Besides, rushing through jerky reps using too much weight puts tremendous stress on the joints and connective tissues, and who wants to be forced out for weeks while an inflamed tendon or torn muscle heals?

Conclusion

We only have so much time in the gym and we only perform so many reps per set. Using proper form can maximize the strength and muscle-building impact of each rep. So assuming an exercise targeting a specific muscle runs 4 sets of 10 reps, lighten the weight so you can use perfect form on every rep, even when fourth-set failure comes. Avoid the urge to force the rep by breaking form and watch your muscles grow. Remember, when it comes to lifting it's how, not how much!

Puncturing Popular Broscience Myths

Broscience [broh-sigh-en(t)s]: A branch of knowledge or study dealing with the human body's response to strength training, supplementation, or nutrition systematically arranged to explain why one doesn't appear in the mirror as they'd prefer to appear.
Origin: 1970s California, gym locker rooms, and backstage at fitness events.

Do you remember your first time? I surely do. It was in a changing room at the gym. Two guys, one slightly muscular and the other pleasantly round. The slightly muscular guy was telling our round friend to "lift weights for size and do cardio for cuts." I'm sure you've heard that line of reasoning before; it's the most popular type of broscience.

Gymlore, regardless of how much time has passed or how much contrary information has come out, is still widely accepted, practiced, and acknowledged as truth. So, let's deflate some of these hot air balloons, shall we?

"Yo Bro, Try This!"
Broscience Myth #1: Never Eat Carbohydrates and Fat in the Same Meal

The food combining theory states that you shouldn't mix carbohydrates and fat intentionally in the same meal. The reasoning behind this is that the insulin spike from the carbohydrates will increase the chances of dietary fat being stored as body fat.

In reality, this is a very myopic view of insulin that doesn't consider the entire meal. I'd never advise a client to consume a high-carbohydrate and high-fat meal together, but there's nothing wrong with having a moderate amount of both at the same time. There's little, if any, scientific evidence to support the theory, and humans have been combining carbohydrates, fat, and protein together for ages and we turned out all right. (Well, some of us at least.)

Most of us who mean business are eating every two to three hours, which means that our nutrients from meal one are still being absorbed when we start to eat meal two. So, the nutrients from our first two meals are acting together anyway, even if we don't intend on it.

Golay, et al. conducted a study looking at a mixed diet versus the food combining theory.

Here's what they stated in their results:

"There was no significant difference in the amount of weight loss in response to dissociated (6.2 ± 0.6 kg) or balanced (7.5 ± 0.4 kg) diets. Furthermore, significant decreases in total body fat and waist-to-hip circumference ratio was seen in both groups, and the magnitude of the changes did not vary as a function of the diet composition. Fasting plasma glucose, insulin, total cholesterol and triacylglycerol concentrations decreased significantly and similarly in patients receiving both diets."

There was actually a slight increase in fat loss in the subjects who used a mixed diet. Go figure, right? We tend to focus solely on the insulin response of carbohydrates, when really the insulin response of a carbohydrate and fat meal depends on how saturated the fat is. An unsaturated fat tends to actually lower the insulin response of the carbohydrate, or not affect it at all.

You also have to factor in your caloric intake. If you're in a lower caloric state, the insulin response from a carbohydrate and fat meal can be a glorious thing. If you're eating a ton of calories, then you might want to watch out.

Let me put the nail in the coffin by saying this: If you follow the food combining theory and its rules, you'll have a harder time maintaining stable insulin levels, which is the point of the whole theory to begin with.

Broscience Myth #2: You Have to Eat Different Foods for Different Goals

Bodybuilding is a fanatical sport because everything is done in extremes. So, it only makes sense that we'd eat different foods when we have different objectives, right? Wrong as the day is long. The line of "clean" and "dirty" foods is so blurred that many a physique has been ruined as a casualty of water.

From a physiological standpoint, there's no difference between "clean" or "dirty" eating, provided that your macronutrients are kept in line with your goals. It's why the cookie-cutter bodybuilding coach that advocates one diet to rule them all often fails. You can take five different dieting bodybuilders and give them five radically different diets and they can all get shredded. It's all about hitting your macronutrient numbers.

I'm not advocating that one should eat a pizza everyday to get ready for the beach — far from it. Let's say that the protein, carbohydrate, and fat amounts in the pizza fit in with your daily allotment. You eat the pizza, and then you're done. What about the rest of the day? You won't have much room left for more fat or carbs; thus, you'll end up wrecking your physique.

Now, I brought up pizza to serve as an example. You can freely eat white rice, white bread, bagels, and pasta daily, as long as they fit into your daily macronutrient numbers.

Broscience Myth #3: Depleting Water Will Make Your Midsection Tighter and Leaner

The most common type of broscience can be found in the days leading up to a bodybuilding event, or even a big day at the beach. Individuals looking to tighten up their midsection will often progressively drop water, while raising carbohydrates throughout the week, until they get to the day of their event when they'd have zero water and ultra-high amounts of carbohydrates.

The fact of the matter is that water is stored in two different areas in the body — intracellularly and extracellularly (inside the muscle and underneath the skin, respectively). The problem with following the cool kids is that the body strictly regulates the intracellular to extracellular balance at a seventy to thirty ratio. If you pull water out of one area (like people try to do with extracellular water), it'll also be pulled out of the other area to keep that seventy to thirty balance.

The ratios don't change; you just get flatter. That is until you have your post-event binge meal and take in copious amounts of carbohydrates and water. You end up looking better the day after the event that you've trained and dieted for during the previous sixteen weeks. Not cool.

Broscience Myth #4: Sodium Makes Your Body Hold Water

This goes hand-in-hand with our previous myth. For some reason, physique athletes are so afraid of what they think sodium might do to their bodies that they put themselves on a path of destruction.

It's true that sodium does make your body hold water. I'm not denying that fact. But that's a rather simplistic view. Your sodium balance affects both fluid and blood volume. Why does that matter? Well, aren't we after a harder and tighter look that depends on both fluid and blood volume? Like the water ratio we mentioned above, the body holds on to its normal range of sodium very strictly.

Your kidneys will either increase or decrease their sodium output depending on your intake. A Harvard study done by Rogacz showed what happens when sodium is restricted over the course of six days. For those who always scream that research studies don't apply to bodybuilders, six days is the typical amount of time that athletes manipulate their intake for a contest or event.

In the Rogacz study, sodium intake was eliminated, but the sodium in the subject's blood stayed the same. By the sixth day, the body had nearly stopped getting rid of sodium. What does this mean? All the sodium manipulations that you did the previous week did nothing! All it did was raise the hormone aldosterone, which causes increased water retention and re-absorption of sodium.

Don't try to trick the body; it's always smarter than we are.

"Hey Bro, It Really Works..."

As you can see from the above four myths, the fitness and bodybuilding insider is filled with crazy claims and ridiculous rationale. Your best bet is to stay on top of the information and by practicing and using each new method. That's the only way you'll truly find out what works.

Don't listen to some folklore because the biggest or leanest guy in the gym said so.

5 Foods You Should Be Eating To Build A Healthier And Muscular Physique

If you want to build a healthy, muscular physique, the quality of your food matters more than the quantity.

I see the diets of a lot of guys who want to get bigger and stronger. They run the spectrum from excellent to atrocious (mostly atrocious), but there's one commonality shared by almost all: every guys thinks his diet is perfect.

Every day I have guys tell me that they don't actually need any nutritional advice, because they "already eat really well."

Bullshit...

Talk with any good nutritionist, and they will tell you it's rare to find someone who consistently makes good food choices. In my mind, it's the true linchpin to body composition success—improving the quality of the foods you eat has just as big of an impact on your physique as the quantity you eat.

With that in mind, here are five foods that you can immediately add to your diet to improve the quality of your calories and take your physique to a whole new level


1. Sprouted Grains
Yeah, you've probably already switched to "whole-grains" instead of white bread. Unfortunately most whole-grain breads in supermarkets today are complete crap. They contain added sugar, fructose or high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten the product, as well as tons of dough conditioners to give it the mouth-feel of white bread.

While the glycemic index is overrated, it still reflects how quickly your blood sugar is raised by a food, and conventional whole-grain bread is barely any better than white. So really, you're not getting that much benefit from whole-grain bread.

This is where sprouted grains come in. Sprouting grains and seeds before baking them creates a vastly superior product. The sprouting causes the composition of the grains and seeds to change dramatically by increasing vitamin content and diminishing phytic acid content. (Phytic acid, by the way, binds to minerals and prevents their absorption. The sprouting process breaks down these bonds and increases the digestibility of the grain and its mineral content.)

Sprouted grain products are also a complete protein source, are higher in fibre, and have a much smaller impact on blood sugar than conventional whole-grains. Because these products are generally made with other grains and legumes, they have a lower gluten content, which is also a good thing.

Most sprouted-grain products don't contain any preservatives so you gotta stick these products in the fridge if you don't want to have a freaky science experiment in your cupboard.

I also suggest toasting them as it causes an enzymatic browning process that really brings out the flavour of the bread.


2. Pasture Butter
Butter, because of its high saturated fat content, generally gets a bad rap in health-conscious circles. Fortunately, we are here to enlighten you and we know that saturated is not nearly the enemy it has long been made out to be. From the right sources it's actually very beneficial.

As with all animal foods, not all butter is created equal. Conventional butter from factory-farmed animals is garbage and is to be avoided. You'll often see the ingredient annatto in the nutritional profile. This is because the beta-carotene content is so low the butter is hardly yellow at all, so annatto is added to give it some semblance of the rich yellow that real butter has.

However, butter from pasture-raised grass-fed cows is an excellent food choice. Pasture butter is high in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and K2. Butter is also the richest known source of the short-chain fatty acid butyrate. Butyrate was recently shown to reverse the effects of metabolic syndrome in rats. (It helped the rats lose bodyweight, decrease cholesterol, triglycerides, and fasting insulin while increasing insulin sensitivity.)

Butyrate is also the primary energy source for your large intestine and may have potent anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer benefits as well.

Pasture butter, unlike conventional, also contains a nice dose of omega-3's, as well as the cancer-fighting CLA. In fact, pastured dairy products are among the richest sources of CLA on the planet, containing 3-5 times more CLA than conventionally produced dairy products.

The best part about pasture butter, though, is that it tastes freakin' incredible.


3. Coconut Oil
Just like with butter, the source of the coconut oil is of utmost importance. I highly recommend the unrefined organic extra virgin type, as it has undergone the least amount of processing and should provide you with the most benefits.

Coconut oil is also very high in saturated fat, but it's made up of a unique saturated fat called medium-chain triglycerides, or MCT's. MCT's have some incredible unique properties: they do not need bile to be digested, they are digested and absorbed intact rather than broken down, and they're more likely to be oxidized as fuel rather than stored as fat.

One of these MCT's is a fatty acid called lauric acid. Lauric acid (which is also found in FA3 makes up about 44% of the fatty acid content of coconut oil. It's converted into monolaurin in the body, which has powerful antimicrobial and antiviral properties.

It makes an awesome addition to stir-fry's, omelette's, and smoothies.


4. Chia Seeds
A long time ago chia seeds were a staple food of some of the world's most dominant civilizations like the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans. It was so prized it was actually used as a currency. (Today it's made for people who apparently can't take care of real pets.)

Chia seeds are very similar to the more common flax seed and may even be better since chia contains more soluble fibre (6 grams), a higher antioxidant content, and roughly equal omega-3 content.

The great thing about soluble fibre is that it's fermented by the intestines and made into short chain fatty acids like butyrate, which as we learned earlier, may improve health and body composition.

Chia, mainly due to its soluble fibre content again, is considered highly hydrophilic. This means that the seeds can absorb up to 12 times their weight in water and form a viscous gel (much like glucommannan), greatly increasing satiety and creating long-lasting energy. It's also a source of iron, calcium, phosphorus, and manganese. Recent research has shown that chia seeds can be beneficial for diabetics, celiac's disease, and can lower cholesterol.

So toss a tablespoon or two into your next protein shake or Greek yogurt.


5. Cacao Nibs
This is dark chocolate for men. No pussy-footing around with a high-sugar "dark" chocolate. This is the real deal, 100% cacao dark chocolate, and nothing but.

Cacao nibs are a fiber heavy-weight, providing just under five grams in 2 tablespoons, which is as much as flax. Besides its high fibre content cacao nibs contain a boatload of magnesium, as well as some copper, iron, and manganese. But the antioxidant content is where cacao nibs really shine.

They're rich in powerful antioxidants such as catechins, like in tea, and polyphenols, like in red wine. These antioxidants help cacao to lower LDL cholesterol, decrease blood pressure, improve vascular and platelet function and decrease the risk of heart disease.

Cacao nibs are perfect to add to some Greek yogurt, a smoothie, or home-made protein bars.

By itself, 100% dark chocolate tends to be a little bitter, so make sure to add it to something a little sweet to knock down that bitterness and bring out the chocolate flavour.


Wrap-Up
Like I said earlier, it's not necessarily the quantity of calories you take in but the quality. These five foods have the ability to greatly impact your health and body composition since the added fibre, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants will all greatly contribute to improving your health and vitality.

And while I can't guarantee that adding these foods to your diet will make you jacked instantly, I can say that optimizing your health will always help you to maximize your performance and your physique.

So, go eat!