Happy Thanksgiving!

Just wanted to say that I am thankful for everything I have and that I am able to do. I am blessed in both my personal and professional life to be surrounded by incredible people. It is a little over a year since MBG S.I.N.Y. opened at it's current location. We have all grown a lot in that year. I have the best clients in the world. You all come in and give 100% everyday. You push yourselves and in doing so push each other. I am thankful to be able to be part of all of your lives and I hope that our MBG "family" continues to grow and become happier and healthier.

Thank You,
Jimmy

MBG Dinner/New 8 Week Cycle

Our first annual end of cycle dinner/recipe swap was a great success. This is the second recipe swap we have done but the first following a 8 week cycle. The food was out of this world! Tasty and strong just like the members of MBG. Here is a list of the food we had to eat.

1. Black bean and sweet potato salad (Jim).
2. Asparagus salad (Jen N).
3. Whole wheat pasta with fresh vegetables (Lauren).
4. Puerto Rican Black Beans (Isabel).
5. Tofu stir fry (Shelby).
6. Quinoa medley (Jim).
7. Mixed vegetables (Kristine)
8. Brussell sprouts and walnuts (Kristine)
9. Vegetarian pizza with two choices of vegetables (Lisa).
10. Lentil soup (Andrea).
11. Cauliflower and curry soup (Greg).
12. Protein Poridge (John).
13. Zucchini and blueberry muffins (Karen).
14. Almond milk smoothies (Jim).

If you didn't make it you missed a great meal and a good time. We will do it again at the conclusion of this eight week cycle. If you do not have a recipe it shouldn't stop you from coming and enjoying the night. I will be sending Melissa the recipes shortly so she can print them out for distribution.

8 Week Cycle Starting November 14th

This upcoming cycle will place emphasis on strength/endurance. The workouts, as always, will challenge you to once again increase your work in each week. We will end each workout with some type of physical buyout that will leave you on a physical high. Encourage and support each other during each workout. Help new members when you can and let's keep the positive vibe that MBG possesses. Remember our logo is representing people helping each other in doing this we help ourselves!

Jimmy

"The Role of Vitamin E as an Antioxidant"

"The Role of Vitamin E as an Antioxidant"
Jimmy Lopez



Many of us know that free radicals are bad for our health and antioxidants are good. Any further explanation may be difficult for most people. A scientific explanation of a free radical would be any molecule or atom that has an unpaired electron in its outer shell (Sharma, 1995). This unpaired electron is highly energetic and causes the molecule or atom to become unstable. The result is that it tries to balance itself by grabbing an electron from another molecule or atom. These unshared electrons can react with oxygen or nitrogen contained in other molecules. The resultant is a free radical that is either a reactive oxygen species (ROS) or a reactive nitrogen species (RNS) (Gropper, Smith, Groff, 2009). Free radicals can be produced through natural physiological processes such as digestion and our body’s natural immunological response to foreign bodies. They can also be produced through exposure to environmental pollutants. They are produced in our body everyday in high numbers. Free radicals are damaging to the cells in our body. Damage occurs when free radicals exist at greater levels than antioxidants. When the cumulative cell injury is great enough that it becomes obvious the result is disease (Esselstyn, 2008). To combat free radicals, the body utilizes antioxidant enzymes and nutrients. Antioxidants have the ability to neutralize and stop reactions involving free radicals (Gropper, Smith, Groff, 2009). The body needs to transform free radicals into something else and antioxidants aide in this function. Some examples of antioxidant nutrients are vitamin c, beta-carotene and the focus of this article, vitamin e.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E is a fat-soluble antioxidant. The most important function of Vitamin E is protecting and maintaining membrane stability within the cells of our body (Gropper, Smith, Groff, 2009). It does this by stopping the production of free radicals that occur with the oxidation of unsaturated fats found within the membranes of our cells (National Institute of Health). Besides helping to maintain cell stability it is also thought that Vitamin E helps in the prevention of heart disease. Scientific studies have shown that Vitamin E slows the formation of atherosclerotic plague within the blood vessels of our body (Blumberg, 2002). Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol is believed to play a major role in cardiovascular disease. Studies have shown that Vitamin E inhibits the oxidation of LDL (National Institute of Health).




Sources

There are many sources of food, both plant and animal, that contains Vitamin E. In plants, Vitamin E can be found in vegetable oils, sunflower seeds, wheat germ, nuts and whole grains (Stanfield, Hui, 2009). In animal products Vitamin E is found in the fatty tissue where it has been stored by the animal that consumed it. Liver, codfish, and butter are considered good sources of Vitamin E. It is important to note that plant based sources are superior to animal based sources in providing Vitamin E (Gropper, Smith, Groff, 2009). Consuming Vitamin E from animal based products means that you are consuming what that animal had stored in its fat from sources of Vitamin E it consumed. It would seem more practical to consume your Vitamin E directly from plant-based sources. It is also important that you try to obtain Vitamin E through natural sources. Research has shown that natural sources of Vitamin E are absorbed at much higher rates than synthetic versions (Challen, 2001). This would mean that you would have to consume much higher levels of a synthetic version to equal a smaller natural dose. Not only does it take the body longer to absorb synthetic Vitamin E, the body will also excrete it faster than a natural form (Challen, 2001). So a synthetic form takes longer to absorb and is excreted faster.



Vitamin E Recommended Intakes

Dietary deficiency for Vitamin E is uncommon. Vitamin E is absorbed in the digestive tract aided by fat. People who have fat-malabsorption disorders may be most likely to be deficient in Vitamin E. High doses of supplemental Vitamin E has been shown to increase the risk of hemorrhage and blood clotting (National Institute of Health). Listed below are the recommended intakes for Vitamin E for adults.

Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs)
15mg, (22.4 IU)
Tolerable Upper Intake Levels (ULs)
1,000 mg, (1,500 IU)





References

Sharma, H. (1995). Free radicals: a major cause of aging. Consumer Health, 18(2), Retrieved from http://consumerhealth.org/articles/display.cfm?ID=19990303172533

Gropper, A., Smith, J. L., & Groff, J. L. (2009). Advanced nutrition and human metabolism. Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Pub Co. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=978-0-495-11657-8

Esselstyn, C. (2008). Prevent and reverse heart disease. NY, NY: Penguin Group.

Stanfield, P. T., & Hui, Y. H. (2010). Nutrition and diet therapy. (5th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett

Blumberg, J. (2002). Unraveling the conflicting studies on vitamin e and heart disease. Retrieved from http;//lpi.oregonstate.edu/ss02/blumberg.html

Challem, J. (2001, November). Natural vs. synthetic vitamin e. Nutrition Science News, Retrieved from http://www.chiro.org/nutrition/full/natural_vs_synthetic_vitamin_e_shtml

8 Week Cycle is Winding Down

We will be completing our seventh week tomorrow of our eight week cycle. I would like to take some time to explain why MBG changed it's training format. As some of you may know Jon Hinds, founder of MBG, has had tremendous success in training professional athletes. He has always been able to constantly get them to make improvements through training in cycles. At the same time he noticed that many of his gym members were getting fit but then hitting a plateau. In an effort to avoid this he made a decision to bring the format he has used to train professional athletes to members of MBG. This is the reason the 8 Week Cycle has been introduced to MBG. As you all know we train hard at MBG and in doing so you deserve to be rewarded with higher levels of physical performance. The 8 Week Cycle will ensure that you are on the right path to achieve those levels.

Some clients have expressed that they miss the variation that was associated with MBG. I understand what you are saying and where you are coming from. Variety has been removed because we train the same workout for an 8 week period. The same 8 week period would of produced 4 different workouts prior. This is a notable difference. However, let's look at some reasons as to why training in a 8 week cycle is beneficial.

Training in this matter allows you to develop a mastery over the movements. This mastery increases your confidence and aids in strength gains. In the seventh week no one is looking around wondering what the movement is, you know it and also know what your limitations are for the movement. Charting your workouts also gives you daily goals each week. Very simply to improve upon your last performance. This holds you accountable to your training. Ten women have been able to do unassisted chins this cycle. This is amazing! I do not think we would have accomplished this without the cycle. We train to get results and you all are getting them. Using this training method also ensures that you are working hard. It removes ones ability to take it easy. It has more than once motivated me to push through any excuse to equal or better my previous performance.

The 8 Week training cycle is here to stay. We will be starting a new cycle in November. If you look around the gym I think you will see what I am seeing. Stronger, healthier, more confidant members. Let's stay motivated and keep blasting through personal hurdles on our way to becoming healthier and stronger individuals. It's always a pleasure to train each of you so let's keep it going forward!

Jimmy

Food Seminar a Big Success!

Food seminar was a big success. Just wanted to thank all of you who brought in a dish to share and Melissa for putting together the nice recipe booklet. I hope you can use the label reading guidelines to make healthier choices when buying packaged goods. There was a nice choice of food to eat. It was healthy and tasty. Hope that some of you realize there are better choices to make that aren't that bad in terms of eating. We even had a tasty banana desert to finish the seminar. Thanks to everybody who came out. Will definitely have to do it again in the spring!

A Really Enjoyable Day

Had a really good day today. Had a enjoyable breakfast with the family and then it was off to train some Brazilian Ju Jitsu at the Codella Academy. My current schedule has made it very hard to train, so I plan on taking advantage of my vacation and get some training in. Mike Codella ran a great training session today. We didn't stop moving for 90 minutes. We started off the session with some back domes, prone mountains and some scorpions to get our lower backs loose before we rolled.

When we were done training I talked with my BJJ brothers about the importance of keeping yourself healthy. My main point was not wait for injuries to occur before you address them. Keep your body strong to prevent them from happening. Eat strong, train smart and listen to your body. As the intensity of your training increases the chance of injury will become greater. At MBG S.I.N.Y. we address this every day. We focus on alignment to correct misalignments we have acquired throughout our life. We train full body movements that increase our functional strength. The last and most important thing is we encourage our clients to eat strong foods. I felt great today during my training. This is a direct result of training using the MBG philosophy.

A lot of exciting things are on the horizon. We have our Nutrition seminar on label reading on January 29. This will include a discussion on how to read labels on foods and realize what you should be looking for. We will also have a tasting of some whole-food, plant based foods as well as a recipe swap for people in attendance. Our first 60 day challenge is fast approaching and a start date will be announced soon. And each day that passes brings the spring one day closer!

Look forward to training with you all this week!