Welcome to our Weekly Edition – September 15, 2008
1. Healthy Recipe: Kidney Beans And Romaine Lettuce & More Great Parrillo Recipes
2. Have You Tried Our New Protein Chew BarsTM Yet?
3. Article of the Week: The Stage 1 Lean Out Phase: Triggering Glucagon
Healthy Recipe: Kidney Beans And Romaine Lettuce
1/3 cup chicken stock
400 g. kidney beans (raw beans)cooked to package instructions
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp. oregano
200 g. onion, chopped
1 tsp. thyme
700 g. (one head) romaine lettuce, sliced
1/2 tsp. basil
200 g. tomato, chopped
1 tsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. CapTri®
In a large, nonstick skillet, sauté garlic in chicken stock for 2‑3 minutes. Add onion and lettuce and sauté for 2 minutes. Add tomato, kidney beans, lemon juice, spices and CapTri®. Sauté 1 more minute to heat thoroughly. Serve hot or cold. Serves six.
More Great Parrillo Recipes To Try:
Black Bean Dip
Try this dip at your next football game gathering
Shrimp Scampi
A delicious meal from the sea
Mexican Fish Fillets
Be sure to make the Jalapeno Tomato Sauce (next recipe below) to serve with the fillets!
Jalapeno Tomato Sauce
Can be served as a dip with raw vegetables
Curry Pumpkin Soup
Try this unique recipe for a change of pace
Sweet Potato Souffle
What a treat! Seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla
White Chili
Try a new take on chili
Veggie Dip
This is great with fresh raw vegetables
Tuna Quiche
Tired of plain tuna? Give this recipe a try!
Tartar Sauce
Make up a batch of tartar sauce for your next fish dinner
Have You Tried Our New Protein Chew BarsTM Yet?
The new Protein Chew BarsTM are the latest Parrillo product to hit the shelves and the response has been amazing! These chewy bars taste just like taffy, making them a great treat without all the sugar! Each Chew Bar is packed with 20 grams of high-quality protein, and has only 180 calories and 2 grams of sugar. Parrillo Protein Chew BarsTM are now available in 10 delicious flavors:
Chocolate
Vanilla
Strawberry
Peanut Butter
Root Beer
Licorice
Chocolate Toffee
English Toffee
Chocolate Graham Cracker
Hazelnut Expresso
Which flavor will be your new Parrillo favorite? Orders placed this week at Parrillo Performance will receive a free sample of the Root Beer Protein Chew BarTM, so now’s the time to give the Chew BarsTM a try!
Article of the Week: The Stage 1 Lean Out Phase: Triggering Glucagon
Just about everyone wants to lose body fat. One of the best ways to lose fat without losing muscle is to manipulate the insulin/glucagon axis. These two hormones are two sides of the same coin: insulin can become the bodybuilder’s best friend for building muscle; the most anabolic of all hormones, the right amount of insulin secreted at the right time can have a magnificent muscle building effect. Too much insulin, however, results in the creation of body fat. Glucagon is generally thought of as a catabolic hormone when in fact it can trigger the body to burn off fat. By reducing carbohydrate consumption at your last meal of the day and engaging in an intense aerobic exercise the next morning, before breakfast, an amazing phenomenon occurs. By reducing carb intake at night, going to sleep and fasting (you aren’t eating any carbs for 6-8 hours while asleep) then waking up and hitting cardio in a glycogen-depleted state, the hormone glucagon is released. This acts as a signal for your body to start burning body fat. The body, deprived of its favorite source of energy, glycogen, emulsified carbohydrates, is forced to use fatty acids for energy.
Glucagon is an important hormone involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Produced by the pancreas, it is released when the glucose level in the blood is low, this is called hypoglycemia. The liver converts stored glycogen into glucose and releases it into the bloodstream. The action of glucagon is thus opposite to that of insulin, which instructs the body’s cells to take in glucose from the blood in times of satiation. John Parrillo has made a science out of manipulating the insulin/glucagon axis through the expert use of nutrition combined with exercise. The goal of bodybuilding is to build muscle and melt off body fat. The expert manipulation of insulin leads to anabolic muscle growth. The expert manipulation of glucagon leads to burning off body fat. Another trick the Parrillo Pros use to further accelerate body fat oxidation is to perform two cardio sessions per day. After eating the last meal of the day, perform a second cardio session. For the sake of example let’s say you eat your final Parrillo-style bodybuilding meal (a portion of lean protein, a portion of fiber and a small portion of starch) at around 6pm. At 7pm perform a cardio session. The idea is to deplete glycogen out of the system. Why go to all that trouble? The more glycogen you deplete before bed means the deeper the glycogen depletion upon awaking the next morning. When you wake up after performing cardio the previous night you are really glycogen depleted. When you commence the morning cardio session, the fat burning is far more intense and far more effective.
The combination of twice daily intense aerobic activity, precision nutrition, and deepening the nighttime fast state, all combines to create a fat-burning window of opportunity. Obviously the more intense and protracted the aerobic sessions the more calories that will be burnt up and the more body fat that will be burnt off. Does this mean you have to perform an hour of cardio in the morning and another hour at night? No; though competitive bodybuilders intent on getting their body fat percentile down to 5% body fat or less will do that much cardio or more. How about getting the ball rolling with a 30 minute morning session and a second 15 minute session done at night? Hold that for a week. Then try and kick up either the duration or intensity of the cardio session for six consecutive weeks? You could keep the 30/15 minute session lengths and seek to go faster and further within that timeframe. You could extend the duration of the sessions a few minutes each week. At the end of six weeks you could be going for 45 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. Regardless which procedure you use, without precision Parrillo-style eating it’s all wasted effort.