As the bird flu rages all alcross the globe and recent news confirm new human victims of this plague in Asia, chicken still stays one of the healthiest choices of meat for non-vegetarian people. Chicken meat provides a high supply on proteins and has a relatively small ammounts of fat/calories. Apart from that some studies claim that chicken meat:

• Protects against cancer, as it has high levels of B-vitamins (niacin) and selenium, which is an essential substance needed for some of your body’s strongest antioxidants.
• That same niacin helps to protect yourself against Alzheimer and similar cognitive declines. Stay mentally fit with chicken!
• B6-vitamins protect your blood vessels against damage.

Chicken is the most important (and the cheapest) source of protein in any fitness diet. And the beauty of it is that there are so many recipes out there that are tasty and wallet-conscious

One of my favourite dishes is fried chicken with mushrooms. I am a pretty bad cook, but this one is so easy to make it’s simply hilarious. Basically all you need is (kg-alert!):

• 1kg of chicken breast (5.98$)
• 1/3 kg of mushrooms (0.49$)
• 1 onion (0.11$)
• soy sauce (0.07$)
• pulvorized curry (0.01$)
• black & red pepper (pulverized) (0.01$)
• 5 table spoons of olive oil (0.05$)

The most difficult part of the whole story is to clean and to cut it all into pieces. If you’re good at it you shouldn’t last more than 15 minutes. Note: you don’t have to cut it all into the smallest pieces ever. Rough medium-sized pieces are just fine.

When you’re done, you put some olive oil into the frying pan and start frying the chicken first. Add pepper, curry and soy and mix it all good. Personally I like chicken when it’s spicy, but this one is all up to you.

As chicken starts to get brown and you get a feeling in your gut that it might be ready, add the mushrooms and a few minutes later the onions and “shuffle” it all. At this point your experiment may be looking like this:

Damn, this thing smells so good I can’t even look at it Nobody can stand the aroma of fried chicken with curry and soja.

Anyway, you leave it like that for another few minutes and as you see the onions getting slightly brown, you’re done. Voila! In the grand total it shouldn’t take you more than 40 minutes. You can do a workout while you cook this dish (that’s what I do).
Usually I make in addition some pasta or rice (0.30$), add a vegetable (like a carrot) to the plate and eat it all together.

This should be enough for 8 plates. So, if you’re a hungry dude and you live alone, you could be eating this for 2-3 days. No unhealthy fast food, no excess of fats, no unnecessary salt. Quick, cheap and healthy. Enjoy! (I know I will )

Note: A real bodytweaker loves chicken meat anyway!
Cost: Depends on where you buy. Could be as much as 0.88$ / plate (without the carrot )

As Sparky said in the previos post, balance is the key to fitness and health. Balance between calories input and output, balance between workouts and rest, etc. I’ve been reading an interesting article about different types of fats and it appears that, according to a new study, a right balance of different oils in your diet may be crucial for your health.

A study published in the British Journal of Cancer reports different effects of Omega-6 and Omega-3 fats on cancer cells (they conducted their study on prostate cancer cells).

• Omega-6 fatty acids are found in vegetable oils, nuts, etc.

• Omega-3 acids are found in fish.

The new theory is that Omega-6 oils give tumours a high energy supply for a rapid growth. However this invasion is blocked by omega-3. You need half as much omega-3 as omega-6 to block the malicious effects on tumour cells.

Therefore, if your diet includes vegetable oils, don’t forget to add some healthy ammounts of fish to your diet, too. For more information you may want to read this.

Note: A real bodytweaker loves fish (in a non-sexual way of course ;))
Cost: Depends… I buy 20 ounces of canned tuna for 3$

What does water have to do with losing pounds? I’ve looked at 14 random weight loss websites today and 12 out of 14 included drinking water as one of the top 3 tips. And as everyone is talking about how wonderful water is for losing weight one starts to rely upon it as a fact.

I think, in todays world one shouldn’t just trust the facts, but understand why those facts are “true”. So I did a little research on what water actualy does to your body and here is a summary of the “underlying facts” :

• More than 70% of your body is water.
• More than 15% of fat cells is water.
• Depending on how much water your body restrains, there may be much more water under your skin than the actual “fat”.
• Your body needs water to regulate temperature, to transport nutrients and “garbage”, etc. In fact water is even more important than food. You could survive without fodd for up to 2 weeks. But you will surely die after 2-3 days without water.
• Your body is highly adaptive. If there is a deficit of water, it will hold on every drop of water. Your kidneys will take the right measures and store all of the water it can wherever it can: under your skin.
• On the other hand, if you supply huge amounts of water your body won’t have any reason to store more as a reserve. By doing this, you can easily eliminate up to 40% or more of “volume” under your skin.
• Your body automatically regulates your body’s temperature. If you drink cold water, it has to be warmed up. This means that 2 liters of cold water daily will lead to up to 70 Kcals of extra burned calories a day. Roughlysaid : a pound a month. That is one of those tricks like cold showers (which also leads to greater energy expediture) that you could easily implement and burn even more calories.

Elimination of water reserves and higher energy spending. These are the two principal reasons why you should take more water for weight loss. Apart of that, there are other studies that suggest several health-related and beauty benefits like staying younger and having a cleaner skin.

A tip: look for water that is low in sodium as sodium retains water in the body and is counter-productive.

Cost: 0,15$-0,20$ or even free for 2 liters of water daily.