Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The Eric Cressey Newsletter

I managed to get my hands on Eric Cressey's New Book, Maximum Strength - Get Your Strongest Body in 16 Weeks with the Ultimate Weight Training Program. Today in his newsletter he featured my results from the program. If you like the content be sure to sign up for his weekly newsletter as it pertains to general fitness, sports, rehabbing injuries and the like.



You can pick up his book at amazon by clicking the picture above. I believe it is available for pre-order but imagine it will be shipping soon. I'm still reading through the book as we speak (I just got my copy) and I'll post a full review upon completion. I can tell you the warm-up section alone is well worth the $13 this book will cost you.

Monday, April 28, 2008

My T-nation Cameo



Tony Gentilcore's newest article on T-nation.com (Testosterone Nation) discusses the importance of adding fillers to your training. You can check out the article here. You should also check out the extremely good looking guy demonstrating improper form on the bench press in the first video(yes it was on purpose). Are you making the same mistake in your training? Check out the article and add some fillers to your routine next time you are at the gym. Stop wasting that resting time in between sets. Make the most of your time in the gym.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Peanut Butter Cookies

So I put on my thinking cap to make a healthy alternative to one of my favorite sweets, the peanut butter cookie. The typical cookie is too high in processed sugars and trans fats, so I had to replace some of the ingredients with "healthy" alternatives. Here is what I came up with:

PPB (Protein Peanut Butter) Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup 100% Dark Chocolate Chips
1 Cup Organic Natural Peanut Butter
5 Scoops of Vanilla Protein Powder (a whey, or milk protein blend works here)
3 TBSP Olive Oil
2 Whole Omega-3 Eggs

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine the peanut butter and eggs until you have a soupy mixture. Add the chocolate chips. Then little by little add the protein powder and when the mixture dries out add in the olive oil. The mixture will be pretty dry at the end so forming them into cookies will be difficult. I combated that by putting the mixture into muffin cups and pressing the mixture into each. I formed them into 6 large cookies. Cook 'em for 18 minutes, let them cool and sink your teeth into a crumbly peanut buttery piece of heaven.



Lets talk a bit about the ingredients:

Chocolate is usually off limits for anyone eating healthy. I say it's pretty ridiculous to eliminate chocolate, because frankly it isn't the chocolates fault that we've dressed it up with trans fats and sugar and designed this thing called milk chocolate. Dark Chocolate in its pure form has great properties for the body including a host of antioxidant polphenols.

Peanut butter
while in the typical store bought variety is loaded with added sugars and trans fats. Thats why I used a natural peanut butter which contains a whopping one ingredient...peanuts. There is nothing wrong with peanuts, it's a healthy fat, the only issue is that you can eat too many of them and it's high in calories...so as long as you are watching your portions peanuts are great.

Olive Oil has a host of benefits that you should probably be aware of at this point unless you live under a rock.

Omega-3 eggs are from chickens fed a diet high in flax seed which allows for the fat content of the egg to contain higher amounts of omega-3s. Omega 3's are linked to weight loss, heart health, anti-cancer, better skin, and the list goes on. Eggs are also a good source of protein.

The milk protein blend gives this cookie a blast of protein and a bit of sweetness from the vanilla flavoring.

I've decided to enter my cookie into a contest. We'll see how it goes.