Great article on Weight Cutting.

Hey Guys,

Following the trend of sharing good information from other sources, here is a great article on cutting weight from YourMMA.

Weight cutting is a very hot topic at all times in combat sports (see what I did there...). I only ever weight cut a few clients and it is always on a day before weight in. Either way, this article will give you some tips and ideas on your next cut (please speak to a Doctor and your coach before trying anything).

You can find the article HERE

Stay Healthy,

Mike

A bit about my current diet.

Hey Guys,

One of the questions I get asked quite a bit is what does my own nutrition looks like?

People assume that, because I do this for a living, my diet must be perfect and the holy grail for anyone wanting to sort out their own nutrition.

This isn't the case at all.

While it is true that I have a very good idea on what works for me when I am trying to accomplish certain things (lose a bit of fat, gain some muscle), I am often trying out different things in the hopes of expanding my tool box to help my clients. Because of this I don't post my diet much as I would just get asked questions like,

• Why is he eating cereal?
• Why isn't he eating any protein?
• Why so much fibre?
• Why does he cheat and then fast?

Plus a whole load of other things. The simple is answer is that I like to experiment on myself to find solutions to problems. Some of them work well (adding LISS in for fighters), some of them bad (drinking just protein shakes for a month).

However even with all of that in mind, here is what my diet looks like at the moment. Bare in mind that this is for me, and doesn't remotely look like what many of my clients are doing. Everyone is different and has different needs and solutions.

These meals are generally dated 3 hours apart with either of the workout nutritions added depending on when I train.

Meal 1  

4 whole eggs, handful of mixed peppers, handful of onions, 1 tomato, 1 tbsp grass fed butter (to cook with), 34g whey protein, 5g added fibre, 1 probiotic, 1 multi vit, 2 fish oil

Meal 2 

100g chicken breast, large green salad, 20 almonds, 2 fish oil

Meal 3 

100g chicken breast, large green salad, 20 almonds, 2 fish oil

Meal 4

100g chicken breast, 100g steak, large portion of green veg

Meal 5

100g chicken breast, 60g natural peanut butter, lots of celery, 2 fish oil, 3 ZMA

Workout Nutrition

Biotest Indigo 3G taken 30 mins prior to workout, 6 caps

Weights

15 mins before - 30g (65g on Deadlift and squat days) Biotest Plazma

During - 30g Biotest MAG 10

NoGi/BJJ

30g MAG 10 during.

That's it really. As you can see I don't really eat that much at the moment and I'm using high protein, high fat, low carb. This is working great for my recovery and sleep at the moment and I'm going to continue with this but add in a few more calories as the weeks go on.

Got any questions? Please post them below or contact me via the SITE

pPlease feel free to post any questions in a constructive way. Want to be a dick about what I'm doing in an unconstructive way? I'll remove your posts.

Stay healthy,

Mike

Unorthodox Superfoods for BJJ

Hey Guys,

Here is an article that I wrote for the last issue of JiuJitsu Style Magazine. Make sure to have a nip over and look at my online articles for them (plus loads of great BJJ content). Also check out the latest issue, its got a great article on protein in there...

Here is the article,

Unknown Superfoods for BJJ

Food is good.

Whether you want to call it nutrition, a diet, fuel or some munch, we all love to eat a bit of food. And why wouldn’t we? We all train hard, taking care of business on and off the mat, we deserve a bit of nice, tasty nourishment right?

However it doesn’t stop there, many of us look at our food to give us better results. Whether it be a leaner body, more muscle or recovering quicker from the beatings that are handed out in tough sparring, BJJ athletes are starting to realise that their food is important to their success on the mat.

Unlike many other sports, health is often one of the top priorities of the BJJ athlete. Because of this, the term ‘superfoods’ often comes up. So what is a ‘superfood’? Well a superfood is a certain type (or types) of food that can dramatically increase our health, recovery or aid in our physique goals.

Many people know of the standard superfoods, but if you don’t here is a brief list of commonly known ones,

·      Broccoli

·      Grass fed beef

·      Wild caught Alaskan Salmon

·      Avocado

·      Extra Virgin Olive Oil

·      Natural Raw Honey

·      Blueberries

·      Turkey

·      Quinoa

There are many more (a quick Google will give you hundreds of lists), but often there are many great and slightly unusual ones that are left out from the list. With that in mind, here is a quick list of some of the lesser known, but amazing superfoods that you can add to your diet to help you stay healthy and recover quicker!

Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut is German for ‘sour cabbage’.

Sauerkraut is finely cut cabbage that has been fermented in lactic acid bacteria including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. While the fancy names aren’t that important, it is the fact that it has been fermented in them that is.

As it has been fermented in these bacteria it has an amazing ability to improve your digestion and gut health because of the enzymes that it contains. This simply means that you can absorb more of the nutrients that you take in rather than it simply passing through your system.

It’s  low in calories, fat and carbs making it great for cutting weight.

Its is also incredibly high in vitamins C, B and K. It is also a good source of dietary fibre, folate, iron, potassium, copper and manganese. To top it all off, because of the fermentation process, it is also even more bioavailable (you digest it better and absorb more nutrients) than actual cabbage!

Kimchi

Kimchi is another fermented food.

It is made in Korea and is often a mix of vegetables that can contain tomatoes, chilli and garlic. Kimchi is often made in jars and left to ferment underground.

Just like Sauerkraut, it is very high in live bacteria (specifically lactobacillus kimchii) that to can aid digestion immensely. Just one serving of the superfood provides a person with over 50% of the daily requirement of vitamin C and carotene.

It is also highly rich in vitamin A, thiamine (vitamin B1 to me and you), riboflavin (vitamin B2), Calcium and iron!

Green Coffee Beans

I love coffee, you love coffee, everyone loves coffee. However this isn’t that type of coffee. The coffee that you are thinking of is a dark bean where these are green.

Green Coffee beans have been directly linked to help aid in fat burning (less fat helps you fit into your true weight class for competition).

Even though the beans are high in anti oxidants, it is the chlorogenic acid content that has been linked to their ability to help aid fat loss. The thing to note here are that the beans must be green.

When they are roasted the chlorogenic acid is broken down and therefore not present in normal coffee.

There have been a few concerns lately of whether it’s ok to take Green Coffee extract rather than using the bean. In a study done by the University of Scranton, they found that there was no detriment to using an extract instead of the actual bean.

Turmeric

Turmeric comes from the root of the Curcuma longa plant and has a tough brown skin and a deep orange flesh. Turmeric has long been used as a powerful anti-inflammatory in both the Chinese and Indian systems of medicine. Turmeric was traditionally called "Indian saffron" because of its deep yellow-orange color and has been used throughout history as a condiment and healing remedy.

While turmeric is a fairly well known spice found in most curries and mustard, many people still don’t seem to be using it in their dishes.

Not only will the spice make your food taste great (who doesn’t love a good curry) but it will also aid in helping reduce inflammation in the body. You know all those acting joints you get when you have a hard spar or someone viciously strips your grips? That’s inflammation. Less of this is good right?

The reason that it does this is down to the yellow, orangey colour of the spice. It contains curcumin.  Curcumin has also been linked to helping suffers of cancer, bowel disease and fibrosis suffers.

Horse

Right don’t all jump down my throats and start sending me hate E Mails because you loved My Little Pony as a kid and how dare I recommend you eat such a majestic beast etc, etc.

If we put aside the fact that most of us have great memories of riding ponies at the beach as children, and the recent scandal of horsemeat in supermarkets (which was about honesty, not what we were eating) and take a second to look at the nutritional profile of horse verses beef for a second.

Per 100g

Calories

Horse – 175g

Beef – 273g

Overall fat content

Horse – 2g

Beef - 18g

Protein

Horse – 28g

Beef – 25g.

As you can see, horsemeat is lower in calories and fat but higher in protein! This is probably due the animals diet. While most cows are fed grain to help plump them up for slaughter and sale, horses are free to roam and eat grass pretty much exclusively. Horse also contains double the amount of iron of beef and vitamins B6 and B12.

Now I’m not saying that you should run out and bump off black beauty, but if you can find horsemeat in a reputable butchers that has been slaughtered humanely and is prepared correctly (not processed) then you may want to take a look.

This is just a small list of slightly unknown superfoods that can help you recover better from training, improve your health, and add some new tastes to your food.

As with all nutrition, making sure you have a correctly balanced diet that contains everything you need is of the upmost importance. Take a few mins to see what you’re actually putting in your mouth, you may realise you can get more out of cheaper, less known food!

Stay healthy,

Mike

Article - 'High protein diet as bad as smoking'. A response.

Hi Guys,

I am assuming that by now that most of you will have read, seen on social media or heard about the article 'High protein diet as bad as smoking'.

Now judging by my Inbox, this has some people worried and most out raged by the claims of this article. Like many other in the diet and nutrition profession, I thought that I would publish my views on the article.

I'm going to say right off the bat that I think this article is inaccurate, irresponsible and just damn wrong. If you agree with the article, then this post probably isn't for you. I am not trying to change your mind, so please don't read this post then send me a long E mail stating how I am the devil. You will not change my mind either.

As much as I hate to give bad journalism traffic, if you haven't read the article you can do so HERE.

You can find the actual study HERE.

I'm going to recommend that you read the study as it quickly becomes apparent how certain things have been ignored or taken out of context by the journalists writing the articles (they basically just focus on the negative and scare monger).

The purpose of this post is not to form a critique of the actual study as I am not one of their peers and I am unqualified to do so. It is merely to highlight some points that are worth considering if you are an athlete or serious trainee.

I personally feel as though the following points were not either highlighted, nor addressed by the articles in the media,

• The first thing that jumped out at me is that the study assumes that people would eat the exact same amount of macro nutrients over a 18 year period based on a 24 hour monitoring. Over the last 18 years the diet of the average American has changed MASSIVELY.
• The lifestyle of an individual would change a great deal over the 18 years. This wasn't mentioned at all. No lifestyle factors that have a profound effect on health such as drinking and drug use, food sources (how nutritionally dense the food was) or micronutrient content and deficiencies, smoking habits, locations of mortalities, class, race, gender, stress levels, blood work. I could go on forever.
• All of the participants were middle aged. What kind of life did they have before the study started? Where they always healthy eaters? Where they active currently or in the past? This is especially relevant for the higher mortality groups.
• As the participants in the high protein group were middle aged, a higher calorific diet would lead to easier fat gain (especially with little to no exercise, however this wasn't clarified). A higher body fat percentage has been linked to higher risks of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
• This would make sense that the lower protein groups had a lower calorific intake.
• Lean body mass, body fat percentage etc was not mentioned for the individuals denying us from seeing trends.
• Nearly all of the participants had an assumed diet that consisted of 51% carbohydrates. This could be linked to the results that they saw.
• The types of cancer that killed the participants was not mentioned. Was high protein diets causing lung or throat cancer? Probably not.
• Mortality rates were mentioned but not in specifics. how many participants were killed by being hit by a bus. Was the driver on a high protein diet? Is protein turning people into driving psychopaths (yes I'm kidding. A little...)

This is just a quick bullet point post, trying you get think about what you are reading and to come up with your own conclusions. You may come to the conclusion that I'm full of shit and you want to write a post about it. If so, go nuts and send me the link :)

Stay healthy,

Mike

Checked out the Unorthodox Nutrition Plan yet?

Losing fat isn’t easy.

Anyone who tells you that it is has either been blessed with good genetics or has never really tried to lose weight.

The problem is that there is that many diets and conflicting types of information out there, no one knows what works and what doesn’t.

Even with the plans that do work they are either far to restrictive or far to complicated to follow.

What people need is a healthy eating plan that tells them what to eat and when but also gives them a little bit of freedom and flexibility so that they can have a social life and not go mad.

Enter Unorthodox Eating.

Unorthodox eating lays out what types of food to eat and when, but still giving you a wide range of choices so that you are getting the right types of nutrients at the right times.

Unorthodox eating has been designed for those individuals that aren’t athletes but want to do a bit of exercise, a couple of times a week to help lose a few pounds and get in shape while still having some flexibility to have a social life and take a break with some nice food.

This plan will allow you to do just that.

Here's what people had to say!

Sara L;

“To be honest I’ve tried nearly every diet out there. Right from stupid stuff like the Special K diet right through to more sensible stuff like Slimming World. None of it managed to get me in as good a shape as the Unorthodox Eating Plan. It’s easy and very flexible. Plus it allows me a treat on a weekend when I see the girls!”

Kev B;

“I’ve tried stuff like the Juice Diet and the Moon diet and none of it seemed to work with me. I speak to Mike all the time about what food is best when, and what is good nutritious, healthy food. He then gave me this plan to try out. I travel up and down the country for work and play badminton on a regular basis. This means that my schedule often needs me to be flexible. The Unorthodox Eating Plan fit perfectly. Everyone has commented on how I’ve lost weight and I’ve never felt better!”

Sam H;

“I’ve got 2 young children and my own business so fitting in exercise is just limited to the odd exercise DVD or making a palates class. This isn’t enough for me to see the changes I wanted and I don’t have the flexibility to do all full athlete programme (plus I’m not an athlete). Mike gave me this plan and it worked wonders. I’ve lost 7 pounds since starting it and nothing has ever been as easy. The meals and snacks have tons of flexibility so I can fit them round whatever I have happening that day. I couldn’t be happier”.

For a one off payment of ONLY £10 you can get started today!

Head HERE to have a look!

Stay Healthy,

Mike

eBook on MMA Nutrition for less than a coffee!

Hey Guys,

Everyone wants to make sure that their nutrition is solid in any combat sport.

The problem can sometimes be that the amount of information out there is so over whelming.

Plus then even if you do find a good source of info, how do you select what is best for you?

This is a quick tips ebook that will help you set up a diet, cut weight, add muscle and stay healthy. It is a great book for those looking to make a diet work in the REAL WORLD! The problem with any diet is fitting round your lifestyle and this will give you 50 handy tips to do just that.

All of these tips I have used with clients to help them achieve the very best results in their sport and physiques!

It's available on just about every platform including (but not limited to),

Amazon
Kindle
iBooks
Kobe
Barnes and Noble

Check it out HERE!

Plus its available for anything that will read a PDF, so even if you have some obscure fancy tablet that I'm not aware of, it will work on that to!

Also if you have a blog, website or write product reviews, give me a shout at mike.unorthodox@gmail.com as I would love to have you review it (terms and conditions apply).

Check it out HERE!

Stay healthy,


Mike

Baby Steps.

Hey Guys,

Today I want to talk about baby steps.

No I haven't reproduced, I'm talking about the steps that you take in your nutrition plan.

When it comes to a nutrition plan, people always rush to start doing everything at once looking for the 'perfect diet'.

I recently spoke to a person who was doing all this trying to lose fat,

• Low carb, low fat diet
• Cardio
• Weight training
• Fasting
• Fat burners
• Refeed days (cheat days)
• Sport training
• Lots of supplements
• Very low calorie diet.

Now they had been using this plan for a few weeks and had gotten some good results. Those results however had stopped.

The problem that they had now was where to go from here? They were already doing just about everything that they could do to lose weight. 

They had done to much and done it to soon!

When it comes to setting up any kind of nutrition plan you need to make small, calculated changes at the right time to move towards your goals. Each thing should be added in slowly and the whole plan adjusted depending what RESULTS you are seeing.

Most of your adjustments should be based on the results seen and your experience.

This is where most people struggle as they get confused by the wealth of information out there. Everything seems to contradict everything else. 

Where do you start? Who do you trust?

Well as always the first person I recommend you speak to is a Doctor and the second is either your coach or another professional. They will be able to help guide you through your nutritional plan, looking out for your best interests.

This is vital for most people and is the reason that most high level professionals use a coach. They take away all the worrying and give it to someone else who specialises in that area, from technique, to recovery, to nutrition.

You will notice that all these professionals teach and coach in baby steps. No coach is teaching flying arm bars before regular arm bars or long pad work combinations before they have taught how to jab correctly.

Your nutrition shouldn't be any different.

Take time to plan your nutrition and make small, calculated adjustments so that you keep moving towards your goals.

Stay Healthy,

Mike

Oh, and if you want a good place to start on nutrition for a great price, try HERE or HERE

A starter Nutrition Plan for £10!

Losing fat isn’t easy.

Anyone who tells you that it is has either been blessed with good genetics or has never really tried to lose weight.

The problem is that there is that many diets and conflicting types of information out there, no one knows what works and what doesn’t.

Even with the plans that do work they are either far to restrictive or far to complicated to follow.

What people need is a healthy eating plan that tells them what to eat and when but also gives them a little bit of freedom and flexibility so that they can have a social life and not go mad.

Enter Unorthodox Eating.

Unorthodox eating lays out what types of food to eat and when, but still giving you a wide range of choices so that you are getting the right types of nutrients at the right times.

Unorthodox eating has been designed for those individuals that aren’t athletes but want to do a bit of exercise, a couple of times a week to help lose a few pounds and get in shape while still having some flexibility to have a social life and take a break with some nice food.

This plan will allow you to do just that.

Here's what people had to say!

Sara L;

“To be honest I’ve tried nearly every diet out there. Right from stupid stuff like the Special K diet right through to more sensible stuff like Slimming World. None of it managed to get me in as good a shape as the Unorthodox Eating Plan. It’s easy and very flexible. Plus it allows me a treat on a weekend when I see the girls!”

Kev B;

“I’ve tried stuff like the Juice Diet and the Moon diet and none of it seemed to work with me. I speak to Mike all the time about what food is best when, and what is good nutritious, healthy food. He then gave me this plan to try out. I travel up and down the country for work and play badminton on a regular basis. This means that my schedule often needs me to be flexible. The Unorthodox Eating Plan fit perfectly. Everyone has commented on how I’ve lost weight and I’ve never felt better!”

Sam H;

“I’ve got 2 young children and my own business so fitting in exercise is just limited to the odd exercise DVD or making a palates class. This isn’t enough for me to see the changes I wanted and I don’t have the flexibility to do all full athlete programme (plus I’m not an athlete). Mike gave me this plan and it worked wonders. I’ve lost 7 pounds since starting it and nothing has ever been as easy. The meals and snacks have tons of flexibility so I can fit them round whatever I have happening that day. I couldn’t be happier”.

For a one off payment of ONLY £10 you can get started today!

Head HERE to have a look!

Stay Healthy,

Mike

Hey Guys,

Today I just want to talk about an article that I read the other day.

I like to read quite a bit of articles and papers online just to help indulge my geeky nature and keep learning :)

This particular article is on a few gentlemen that ate nothing but meat for an entire year. Some of them also continued beyond that.

The article looks at their health and what benefits they received plus any complications.

As paleo and low carb diets are still all the rage I thought it may interest some of you?

I am in no way saying that this is good or bad, I just thought that it was an interesting read.

Give it a quick look and let me know what you think!

You can find the article HERE

Stay Healthy,

Mike