May25

Roasted Cauliflower and Chickpea Bowl

by Marcella on May 25, 2013 at 3:00 am
Posted In: Bodybuilding, Main Dish, Recipe
 

Actually this recipe has more components than listed – I just didn’t want the title to get out of hand. This meal, which Derek and I just enjoyed for the first time, is filling and really flavorful in spite of being seasoned only with salt and pepper. This is one of my cutting phase concoctions, based on some recipe ideas from the cookbook Appetite for Reduction, created to meet our contest prep macronutrient requirements. The quantity of roasted cauliflower stands in nicely for rice!

Sorry for the terrible picture – I blame Derek:

Roasted Cauliflower and Chickpea Bowl

Ingredients:

Makes 2 big bowls

  • 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
  • 1 block extra firm tofu, cubed
  • 1 red bell pepper, roasted (instructions below)
  • 2 Tbsp slivered raw almonds, toasted
  • 1/2 head of cauliflower, roasted (instructions below)
  • salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450. Chop the cauliflower into very small pieces, about 1/4 inch around or so. Cover a baking pan with a fine layer of salt – not a ton – and spread the cauliflower out on it. Roast in the oven along with the red bell pepper, flipping with a spatula about every 10 minutes for 30 minutes or so. You’ll need to keep an eye on it. The red pepper should be turned over midway through this period and taken out when it’s skin is blackened and blistered. Let it cool off a bit, then peel off the skin and remove the stem and seeds and chop finely.

Meanwhile: Toast the almonds by tossing them about in a medium hot pan until lightly browned. Remove and set aside. Saute the tofu cubes until lightly golden. I don’t cook with oil and instead add a pinch of salt to the pan and carefully flip with a metal spatula to keep it from sticking. Add the chickpeas and warm up a bit in the pan.

I like to make a nice presentation out of these austere (but in this case truly delicious) meals by serving them in big ceramic bowls in layers: tofu, then chickpeas, then cauliflower, then red pepper and a sprinkling of the almonds finished with some black pepper.

 

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Apr30

What Vegan Bodybuilders Eat for Lunch Every Day

by Marcella on April 30, 2013 at 10:07 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized
 

This lunch, of basic things like lentils and sweet potatoes, does great things. It makes our lives easier by being simple to make in advance, satisfies sweet cravings on a daily basis, makes our one-year-old happy, and wins bodybuilding competitions. We’ve been eating this lunch almost daily (and now daily as we prepare for a competition 13 weeks from now) and have yet to get tired of it. What is this amazing meal you ask?  Three things:

  • Curried red lentil soup
  • Baked sweet potato
  • Blackened tofu salad

IMG_1148

You can find the soup recipe here with two changes – we now use 1/2 or less of the ume vinegar because it turns out it has a LOT of salt and we add a large floret of minced broccoli. Sweet potatoes are easy to bake: poke them with holes and bake them at 415 degrees for 45 – 75 minutes; you will have to pierce them with a knife here and there to check for sufficient softness as cooking times vary a lot by size and ovens. While orange sweet potatoes are, of course, delicious, I urge you to try Japanese sweet potatoes. They’re purple-skinned, white-fleshed, and far sweeter than the orange variety. I love them. LOVE. Eat them daily and you will find junk food cravings disappear. As you can see above, we like to mix it up and split one of each!

The salad is easy: it’s just a standard green salad with some grape tomatoes, cucumbers, a few olives and balsamic or red wine vinegar dressing. The fun part is the tofu. Use 1/2 a block of extra firm tofu for two people and dice it or cut it into strips. Preheat a pan on medium high and sprinkle with a bit of salt to keep the tofu from sticking. Toss the tofu on, let it “blacken” a bit on one side, then throw in about 1 1/2 – 2 tsp of either Jamaican jerk or Blackened Cajun or Creole seasoning then flip over and toss around, preferably with a metal spatula. Cook a little more than serve over the salad.

What makes this lunch easy is that each component is not only easy to prepare but can be prepared in bulk in advance for the week. Make a big batch of soup: One batch makes 3 bowls – that’s 3 lunches worth! Bake a few sweet potatoes in advance and then they only need to be heated a bit each day. Prepare a block or two of tofu for the salad in advance and you have all of your work lunches done, knowing that they’ll be low fat, filling, healthy, and you’ll actually WANT to eat them instead of going out for Chipotle because it tastes better.

Bonus: Babies love spicy curried lentils and jerk tofu! Seriously, this vegan beast usually finishes off three dishes of soup and gets into our tofu before he’s done! It’s just that good.

Miles's favorite foods

Miles’s favorite foods

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Apr19

14 Weeks Out!

by Derek on April 19, 2013 at 10:02 pm
Posted In: Bodybuilding, Nutrition, Workout
 

The Naturally Fit Super Show in Austin, TX is approaching fast, so over the past two weeks Marcella and I have shifted from off season into pre-contest mode! Here’s the down low on what we’re doing to prepare for this major event!:

Time Frame: Since I was less than happy with my last appearance on stage, I wanted to give us both plenty of time for a long slow contest prep, so we decided to start at 16 weeks out by reigning in the diet, adjusting our routines, and increasing cardio slightly. With this long to prepare we should be able to make easy, gradual changes and get into peak condition without too much torture or muscle loss. Plus, we’ve stayed on a very clean diet and have both been doing cardio the entire off season, so we have decent conditioning right from the get-go!

Diet: Marcella will be posting our exact meal plans in our member portal as we update them so that members can follow along, and we will also be posting pictures and recipes when we can as well. As I mentioned in my last post, my goal this off season was to increase Marcella’s metabolism as much as possible, and keep mine humming along as well, by maintaining a little cardio, doing some high intensity work, and eating as many calories from a clean diet as we could get away with. Now that we are into the preparation stage, calories will be slowly reigned in as the weeks go by, and cardio will be increased as well to make a fat-loss deficit. We’ve both calculated the body fat percentage we want to reach in 16 weeks, and the amount of fat in pounds we need to lose to get there,  so we are doing weekly assessments to decide when we will need to decrease calories and increase cardio. For now we’ve each reduced our daily calories by about 300, eliminated all refined foods like brown rice pasta and sprouted grain breads and wraps, and sources of fat like avocados and nuts. We’ve also reduced eating out to once or twice per month for the duration, and then only very healthy fare. We’ve also started adding branched chain amino acids before and after workouts, see post.

Routines: My routine has actually been staying pretty consistent, so the previous post will have the details on what I’m doing and why. The only real change I’ve made is hitting a double split (am and pm workouts) twice per week on whichever workouts fall on Tuesday and Thursday, and allowing my self a bit more creativity with the sets and reps while still hitting all the exercises I have listed for each workout. So far it’s working excellently and I’m now the leanest I’ve ever been at 190lbs – 6.5% body fat! (see pic below)

Back shot - 16 weeks out!

I’m updating Marcella’s program every 4 weeks based on feedback from her and what we both feel needs to be addressed, and for the past several weeks we’ve been working on increasing her volume and frequency (longer workouts more often), especially for her upper body so we can gain as much muscle there as possible. She’s making great progress, and has been working so hard at it we’ll probably schedule a reduced volume/frequency week in the near future to boost recovery. Here’s her most recent program.

Arnold pressing 30 pounds for sets of 8 at our gym!

Arnold pressing 30 pounds for sets of 8 at our gym!

Cardio: The major change here is the addition of a weekly sprint session and a weekly posing session. I’m sticking to the 20-30min swim and 20-30min run I’ve kept up, and Marcella is now doing 30 minutes of steady cardio 5x per week, and to that we’ve both added the timed sprints and posing on our off days. Sprints are fantastic for stimulating the metabolism and creating an excellent hormonal environment for muscle growth/recovery, and posing is literally what the sport of bodybuilding is all about so these two changes will make a big contribution to our conditioning as weeks pass. We currently do 6 sprints of apprx 80 meters, and as time passes we will increase the amount of sprints per session, as well as the number of sprint and posing workouts per week. We will also increase steady state cardio, but I’d like to keep this as low as possible for the duration to maintain our metabolic rates.

 

So goes our progress! We’ll add more info as we make changes, so stay tuned!

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Mar13

Vegan Cruise Highlights, Our Talent Show Performances, and a Special Announcement

by Marcella on March 13, 2013 at 11:54 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized
 
Posing with Robert and Karen of Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness

Click to see more pics!

Our second year on board the MSC Poesia, the Italian cruise ship that hosts the Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan vacation, did not disappoint. Some highlights, both fun and educational, were:

  • Vegan ice cream, pizza, or “milk” and cookies parties every night. Since Miles was with us, they generally involved us taking turns to run up on deck and grab some snacks rather than partying into the night, but it was still a treat.
  • Dr. Barnard’s lecture on improving cognitive function and preventing Alzheimer’s disease with a plant-based diet, including LOTS of supporting studies and interesting anecdotes. From his new book Power Foods for the Brain
  • Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s lectures. Derek attended
  • Four course breakfasts and five course lunches and dinners every day. Admittedly, some were a struggle with an 11-month-old, but it helps that he likes to eat.
  • All you can eat fruit all day in the cafeteria. I think in general, because it’s a European rather than American cruise company, the quality of the food is far better. They also sometimes had cheeseless pizza and vegan Indian and Italian dishes on the buffet.
  • Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s cooking classes. I attended one on satisfying cravings with whole foods at which she demonstrated a lentil soup, hummus-based quesadillas, and …The Q & A that went on during the demo was full of helpful tips. Did you know that canned beans cause less gas because of the long soaking they are put through to remove their sugars for canning?
  • A fascinating lecture on longevity that Derek attended taught by Diane Haworth and Michael Varbaek , a couple that has been researching the habits of the world’s longest lived people. Some of their lesser-known habits: drinking hot water or hot beverages and eating soup every day, eating a lot of sweet potatoes, and many others that Derek will share.

Also fun was the opportunity to perform in the talent show! I danced (somewhat cautiously because the ship was moving!) and Derek did a posing routine in some short shorts we got at a souvenir shop in Jamaica.

AND…drumroll please….Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Colleen Patrick-Goudreau have agreed to allow us to share our DVD’s of their presentations from the cruise with you!

Our intern is even now working to get those videos formatted and uploaded for us to share through our member portal, so look for that in the near future. So when you’re planning a vacation for next year, consider this awesome vegan event – next year’s cruise will be on a brand new larger ship (they’re even considering adding a European cruise if enough people sign up). And if you do, don’t forget to mention us (Derek or Marcella) so that someday we can be presenters, bringing you some personal training and fitness classes on board!

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Feb25

The Biggest Vegan Bodybuilding Event Ever!

by Derek on February 25, 2013 at 2:08 am
Posted In: Bodybuilding, Nutrition, Workout
 

 

Marcella and I have been in heads-down training and working mode recently so we haven’t been posting as much as we should, but I wanted to update everyone on one of the things we’re currently preparing for – the biggest vegan bodybuilding event ever! A big group of vegan physique competitors are all competing in a show together this summer: The Naturally Fit Super Show in Austin Texas on July 26th and 27th! There will be at least 20 vegan competitors meeting up and competing in bodybuilding, physique, figure, and bikini so the entire spectrum of physique athletes will be represented, and the event will be covered by Vegan Health & Fitness Magazine! Obviously we’re really excited and are training like crazy to make a good showing at such an awesome event! Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Derek: Nutrition – Since coming in with too much body fat hurt my placing at my last show, my main focus this off season has been gaining as much muscle as possible while staying pretty lean (<10% body fat). I generally don’t worry about my body fat or dieting strictly unless I’m about three months from a show, but this time Marcella and I have both been tracking nearly every meal, eating cleanly, and I’ve been sticking to doing cardio twice a week whereas I normally don’t do cardio until I’m in contest prep-mode because weight training 5 days a week keeps me fairly lean. The results have been great thus far! I’m weighing in at 192lbs and am hovering between 8 and 9% body fat, which is probably the leanest I’ve been at this weight! My goal at the beginning of the off season was to get back to 200 lbs by April 1st without exceeding 10% body fat, but it looks like I may come in a little short of that. If my last contest taught me anything though, it’s that conditioning wins every time – so as long as I’m not gaining fat I’m happy! I also want to give a BIG thanks to VeganProteins.com and PlantFusion for sponsoring us during our training – you guys are the best!

Training -wise I’ve increased my lifting frequency from once a week per muscle group to working each group every 4-5 days; check out my routine here. My favorite and most productive routines in the past involved working everything twice a week, but that invariably led to injury as well. So far I’m making great progress on everything but chest work (I’ve had a nagging shoulder impingement for a couple months so no benching) and no new aches/pains are cropping up! I attribute this in large part to our awesome massage therapist Lindsey Scott doing some painful deep tissue work on us twice a month – if you’re in Richmond you need to try her out! Here’s a recent video of a quick posing practice:

Marcella: Training – I’ve been helping train Marcella for this contest, and since she is starting from a postpartum/nursing/light training schedule, our focus for her has been gaining as much muscle as possible before strict contest prep starts, while still improving body composition. To accomplish this I’ve been updating her routine in 4 week phases, with each phase getting progressively more intense and having slightly different objectives. Her first phase was just geared on getting her back into a body building routine of training 5 times a week, as well as gaining as much strength as possible so the focus was on compound moves for lower reps with maximal weight, and striving to improve the weights every week. Since then she’s gone through two more phases, the second one being similar to the first (listed here), but with added volume (sets/reps) and a few more exercises. Her current program is backing off of the low rep focus and transitioning more into volume and conditioning by adding super sets, increasing reps and decreasing rest intervals. She also has had back pain on and off, so we’re using the current phase to take a few weeks off of squatting and deadlifting.

For cardio I started Marcella off with a light one hour per week at 140 BPM, broken into 2 or 3 sessions as fit her schedule. We’ve more than doubled it so far, and each phase we will be increasing both the volume and the intensity of cardio by adding more total workouts for more time, and making an increasing portion of them High Intensity Interval Training or metabolic conditioning circuits. An important objective of everything we’re doing is to speed up her metabolism by gaining muscle, working out quickly and very intensely, and eating as much clean food as possible without gaining body fat. This is really important because when the time comes to focus only on getting leaner, the faster her metabolism is the easier everything will go.  The results so far have been excellent. Marcella has maintained her body weight while dropping over 6% body fat and increasing her strength across the board. This means that she’s also gained about 8 lbs of muscle in only a couple months of serious training!

Nutrition wise Marcella has been drawing us up some great meal plans that are progressively cleaner but still hitting the macros we’re after. One of our most recent ones is listed in her post here, and members will be able to find them all in our Member Portal!

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