Just a video today. Enjoy

I am preparing my dinner and was just thinking about this.

Pizza is one of the most favourite foods for most people. Is Pizza heathy or unhealthy for someone doing fitness training? I always try to choose some fresh toppings and add tuna or chicken to it, but can not do it without cheese on the top. So is this bad or not?

Is Pizza a Healthy Food?

I would like to know from you what you think and what recipes you have for a healthy pizza. Or do you not eat pizza at all?

Please tell me how to make a healthier pizza. Use the comments section to dicuss this and share your option on healthy pizza.

I will start a series of YouTube videos on food and nutrition in the next time.

Let’s start with breakfast.

From time to time, especially while putting weight on in the winter season I take creatine. In my opinion the only proven supplement that is worth the money and works, at last for me.

Over the years I have heard a lot of stories about creatine and met quite a few people that had real problems with it. Well, for me it always worked in regards of building up strength.

For sure it will not build muscles, but the additional strength helps with it. The side effect is that you store quite a bit of water in the muscles. Your muscles will look full, but not defined.
Not a real problem for me as I only take creatine in the winter when I have a higher body fat percentage anyway.

So they are some questions around creatine for the beginner:

What does creatine?

Creatine causes fluid to flow from the surrounding tissues into skeletal muscle (Muscle Volumizing). This cellular water essentially follows creatine into skeletal muscle causing them to swell. During the first days of loading the amount of water retained by our muscles can be considerable, accounting for as much as 1-3 kilograms (~2-7 pounds) of added weight. Furthermore, since this process might deprive our remaining body tissues of necessary fluids, dehydration is a valid concern of creatine use.

How much creatine to take?

Back in the old days when creatine came on the market the was a loading scheme to start with it, in other words
you will take a high dose for a while and then go to a lower level for a while.

I am still using this technique and it seems that there a lot of other people doing this.

So in the first 2 weeks I take 4-5 times a day a table spoon of creatine monohydrate with some orange juice, make about 25 gramm.
When I started with creatine I tried 8 times a day with 40 gramm. This worked very well for me in younger years and I had a great pump
in the muscles, but one needs to be careful with the kidneys   For some a high level of creatine means some gastric distress… Also some other side effects
might be possible: Nausea, Cramp possibly due to water retention (I can confirm this), Dizziness if excessive quantities taken, Diarrhoea

I usually control the max. intake with controling my urine flow. If the last bit of urine looks not clear anymore, I know that this is creatine and the body get rid of it.
In other words the storage in your muscles is full and you are flushing money down the toilet.

When the two weeks are over I reduce the creatine intake by 50%, this is called the Maintenance Phase. Some people add a Wash-out Phase where you do not take creatine for a while.

Have a look here for calculating your correct creatine dose http://www.gain-weight-muscle-fast.com/creatine-dose.html

When to supplement.

When taking it 4- 5 times a day you need to add it to your meals, as you should eat every 3 hours anyway. That is what I do or I put it simply in my whey protein shake.
Otherwise I have no preferences. Some say you should take it directly after workout with juice. Something that I do anyway with protein.

Is loading really necessary?

Good question. For me it works. But if you have gastric distress or problems with your kidneys, you should leave this out and start slowy.

Here some links I found on the topic with some more indepth information about creatine.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/koch1.htm
http://www.trulyhuge.com/creatinemonohydrateL14.html
http://www.creatinemonohydrate.net
http://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/creatine-supplements-common-questions-answered.html

Let me know about your experience with creatine.

While I am using the winter to work on strength and size I am eating a bit more then usual and train differently. So I managed to put almost 10 kg in 3 months on my frame. Surely I want to avoid fat as much as possible, but as everyone should know that is simply not possible (unless you use steroids).

So looking into food made me stumble about the Sumo wrestlers diet. Sure these guys are not a good example for a lean and shaped body, but nevertheless it is interesting to lean what they eat.

I was quite surprised to learn that the focus on a soup. They eat Chankonabe, the Japanese sumo wrestler soup. A very, very hearty soup with lots of meat like Chankonabe can include vegetable, pork, chicken or beef.

So eat this soup more than once a day.

And here is what the do (or not do) during the day.

The skip breakfast to keep metabolism low, then training and only then they start to eat. After the meals they rend to sleep a few hours, so that the body will store the additional and not used energy in fat. That is something that we as fitness enthusiast definitely do not like.

But the soup itself sound interesting, as it contains lot of protein. So I will try it out and maybe it is something that one can use in the bulk up diet from time to time.

Here an example recipe, but there are plenty on the net. I found this one on http://www.soupsong.com/rchankon.html

* 1 pack udon noodles

* 12 cups chicken stock

* 4 boneless chicken breast halves, cut into 2-inch chunks

* 1 daikon radish, sliced

* 1 potato, sliced

* 2 onions, quartered

* 12 shiitake mushrooms, stemmed removed and quartered (can use reconstituted dried shiitakes, if you like)

* 1 carrot, peeled and sliced into bite-size chunks

* 1 cake fresh tofu (“cotton” or non-silken so it won’t break up on you), cut into small cubes

* 1 cake fresh tofu (also cotton variety), cut into small cubes and fried on all sides in oil til they take on color (if you can find it in the store, get abura-age,which are deep fried thin slices of cotton tofu)

* 1 medium bok choy cabbage, chopped into small pieces

* 1/2 cup soy sauce

* 1/2 cup mirin (sweet sake)

* 2 teaspoons salt

Garnish: gratings of that racy, narcotic shichimi, if you can get your hands on it

Cook the udon noodles according to directions, drain, and reserve.

Bring water to boil in a saucepan, then add the sliced daikon and potato and parboil for a few minutes. Drain, refresh with cold water, and reserve.

Bring the chicken stock to a boil, add all the vegetables (not including the daikon and potato or the cabbage), chicken, and two kinds of tofu and simmer until the fresh vegetables are cooked through, about 15 minutes. Add the daikon, potato, and cabbage and simmer 5 more minutes.

Season the broth with soy sauce, mirin, and salt to taste, simmer a few more minutes.

Place the cookedudon noodles in deep soup bowls, then ladle the soup over them and serve piping hot, passing the shichimi separate, to grate over the soup to taste.

And a nice Sumo video for entertainment.