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Salsaweb Health and Fitness
Del is an avid Salsa dancer, a member of the World Famous Liquid Silver Productions Dance Company, and is now in charge of Salsaweb's Health and Fitness section! You may know Del Millers as The
Duke of Fitness, because the last 10 years has seen Del at the forefront of the
Fitness and Transformation movement-- writing books and speaking at conferences
and retreats across the United States. Here's to your Health, and welcome
to Salsaweb Del! Articles: GET THE NUTRITION EDGE Dancers are athletes too. So why is it most dancers do not train like athletes? Most athletes have a strength and conditioning program. The smart ones even have a good nutritional strategy. What about dancers? Do you have a strength and conditioning program? Do you find yourself sitting around when the DJ or band is playing one of your favorite songs because you’re too darn tired? With all the dancing you do, have you ever wondered why your body is getting more flabby--instead of lean, firm and strong? Did you know that engaging in hours of intense physical activity without the proper nutrition could put you at a higher risk for getting a stroke or a heart attack? And finally, would you like to look great, while having the energy to outlast anyone on the dance floor? Read on, I’ll share with you some simple nutritional strategies for staying healthy, getting lean and dancing for hours without getting tired. Why weight training? I have traveled all over the world and have met many dancers. However, no matter where I go, most dancers seem to have two things in common. The majority of dancers I’ve met very rarely engage in weight training and most have very poor nutritional habits. These are two very dangerous combinations. First of all, weight training not only helps to develop lean muscle tissue, it also helps to build strong bones and to strengthen your ligaments. Your body takes an incredible beating every time you go out dancing for 2-3 hours. But you’re not only beating up your body, you’re also putting a lot of stress on your ligaments and other attachments. Without proper weight training, it is much easier for you to pull, strain or sprain these ligaments. Which could end up taking you out of commission for a very long time. (Click here for a sample weight training workout)---LINK TO 10 MINUTE WORKOUT The Right Macronutrient/Micronutrient Balance To understand performance nutrition you must first understand the nutrient make-up of food and how each nutrient contributes to the energy production cycle. All foods are made up of macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients are carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Micronutrients are the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other known and unknown food chemicals. Both food groups are essential to peak performance. Dancers need to have a diet that is high in complex carbohydrates and contains moderate amounts of protein and fat. Your diet should also contain a wide multi-colored variety of fresh fruits and vegetables––these are the best sources of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other important food chemicals. Keep in mind that the various colors of fruits and vegetables represent a different group of micronutrients. And they all work synergistically together, so eat your colors.
Carbohydrates in the body are broken down into sugar molecules that are then stored in your muscles and liver as glycogen. The body’s preferred fuel for endurance sports is muscle glycogen. Dancing is an endurance sport. If muscle glycogen is used up faster than it is replaced, your glycogen stores become depleted. Glycogen depletion leads to fatigue and the inability to maintain a high level of intensity during training and competition. To prevent this from happening, the endurance athlete needs to get about 60-70% of his/her daily total calories from complex carbohydrates. The best sources of carbohydrates are whole grains–– such as whole wheat breads, cereals, and pasta––legumes (beans and peas), and of course fruits and vegetables. To figure out how many grams of carbohydrates you should be consuming each day, multiply your weight in pounds by 3.2. In my new book, Simply DELicious, I outlined a step by step process for developing your own nutrition program. How much Protein do you need The body uses protein for muscle growth and repair. During intense training and competition muscle tissue can be severely broken down. Therefore the competitive athlete must consume enough protein for repairing damaged muscle fibers and growing new ones. Remember that muscle tissue is made up of 22% protein and 78% water. Without adequate protein intake damaged muscle tissue cannot be properly repaired and your body cannot build new fibers. This will in turn limit your dancing and eventually lead to injury. Endurance athletes need approximately 1.4 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram bodyweight [BW], (1 kg is approximately 2.2 pounds). Some good sources of protein include lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and dried beans. Approximately 15-20% of your daily calories should come from protein. How much fat do you need? Fat is the body’s primary energy source during low to moderate intensity endurance activities. This does not mean that extreme athletes don’t need fat in their diets, just the opposite. The body needs Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s––omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids) that assist with almost all bodily functions, including the transport of vital nutrients across the cell membrane for energy production. These fats are called essential because your body cannot produce them; they must be supplied by your diet. Some good sources of EFA’s are cold water fish (like salmon and trout) and flaxseed oil. Approximately 10-15% of your daily calories should come from fat. What about the micronutrients? Dancers, runners, cyclists, bodybuilders, martial artists, these are athletes whose bodies require a great deal of energy to sustain the level of intense activities they perform—to name a few. Unfortunately, I find that the average exerciser is far more nutrition conscious than most athletes. If you are an athlete or very active person, take note. Extreme athletes experience more strokes and heart attacks than the average non-exercising individual. Shocking isn’t it? If you are a very active person, your body requires a great deal more nutrients for the energy production cycle. Energy for your working muscles come only from the foods you eat. And if you only eat one or two meals per day, which for most athletes is junk food, your body is nutrition starved. Every time you dance, run, jump, kick, bike, or swim without proper nutrition, your body has to draw upon its reserves. In many cases, it has to pull nutrients from other important body functions…like getting rid of toxic waste build-up, making sure enough blood and oxygen is supplied to your heart and working muscles, keeping internal body temperatures at a safe level, and a host of other critical functions. In short, to engage in athletic activity without proper nutrition is not only stupid, over the long run it will also prove to be deadly. When you burn wood in a fireplace you get fire and ashes. Likewise, when your body converts food into usable cellular energy (ATP), you not only get energy, but you also get cellular waste…those deadly free radicals you’ve heard about that bounce around your body and burn holes into the membrane of healthy cells. If free radicals continue to build up in your body, which is the case with very active people with poor nutrition habits, eventually this build up may lead to a stroke or heart attack even in a seemingly healthy individual. Now did you know that active individuals produce a million times more free radicals than non-active people? Did you also know that your body must have “antioxidants” found in fruits and vegetables to neutralize these free radicals? Did you know that the leading health organizations (American Cancer Society, the National Institute of Health and the American Heart Association) all recommend that you eat 6-9 servings of fruits and vegetables daily to prevent cancer, stroke and other degenerative diseases. And this number is based on you being a sedentary person. Does an active individual need more antioxidants from fruits and vegetables than a non-active person? You bet. My recommendation to my clients is to have a serving of fruits and/or vegetables with each meal 5-6 times per day. In addition, I also recommend that they use a powdered fruit and vegetable supplement in capsule form to give them the additional nutrients they’re not getting form their meals. I use and recommend the Juiceplus+ product (which contains the nutrition of 17 different fruits and vegetables in only four capsules a day). It is the only one, to my knowledge, that is supported by a wealth of scientific research published in peer-reviewed medical journals (Click here to read the research). It is also supported by thousands of doctors and other medical professionals worldwide. You can find more information on this product at my website, http://www.delmillers.com What should you eat? So what should you eat to “look good naked,” and outlast anyone one the dance floor (except me, of course)? Stop going to Denny’s at 3am in the morning!! If you’re serious about changing your body you need to get a copy of Simply DELicious! I’m really not trying to push my book. However, in it, I spell out in detail, everything you need to know to change your body. This includes: designing your program, shopping list, sample meal plans, and over 130 10-minute recipes; these are recipes you can make in ten minutes or less. (Click here for a sample meal plan). Here are some simple guidelines to follow:
The Bottom Line The Bottom Line here is if you don’t eat the right foods, you will end up wearing the wrong ones. Food should serve one primary purpose, and that is to fuel your working muscles. Just think for a second. Your body needs important nutrients just to break down the foods you eat. If you eat healthy nutritious foods, it will get the nutrients from what you eat. On the other hand, if you eat junk, it has to pull important nutrients from other important bodily functions just to process the junk you just ate. If most of your meals are made up of highly processed foods (fast foods, sugar snacks, all white flour products, etc) then you’re starting each day with no fuel in your tank which place an enormous burden on your system. However, your body will function (for a while), because it wants to live. Just don’t expect it to burn fat, get rid of toxic waste, neutralize harmful free radicals, repair that torn ligament or pulled muscle you suffered in practice yesterday, or supply you with energy to dance all night long. And by the way, did I mention that you might seem healthy on the outside, but each day that passes brings you a day closer to a stroke or a heart attack? No I didn’t mention that did I? Hey, look on the bright side. You literally CAN turn back the clock at a moment’s notice. All you have to do is to start making healthier choices TODAY. I invite you to make today the day you choose to own up to the fact that you are a dancer. And as a dancer, you are an athlete. And as an athlete, your body needs important nutrients that it can ONLY get from the foods you eat. Give your body what it needs and you too can look healthy, fit and strong and outlast anyone on the dance floor. - Del |
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