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Kitchn’s Delicious Links column highlights recipes we’re excited about from the bloggers we love. Follow along every weekday as we post our favorites.

Lemons are my biggest heroes in the kitchen. In my youth there were many days when I’d get home late and there’d be no ingredients in the house, so I’d shrug it off as a “not the right time” for cooking, and just order dinner. (Sushi if it was close to payday, pizza if it wasn’t.) But over the years I’ve learned that if there are lemons in the house, I can almost always cook something. With the right recipe, I can even have dinner plated before my delivery app would have even switched my meal from “processing” to “on its way.”

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If you’re from the West, chances are you’ve never encountered black ginger extract before. If, however, you’re from the East, and in particular Thailand, the legendary reputation of this spice precedes itself. Also known as kaempferia parviflora, black ginger is touted for its effects on male sexuality; increasing libido, endurance, and of course, sexual prowess.

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http://www.thealternativedaily.com/

Just a few years ago, I was like anyone else. I shampooed my hair with some sort of “herbs and botanicals” shampoo that, unbeknownst to me at the time, was actually perfumed with parabens, and washed my clothes with the scent of Summer Rain, or some other vague fresh-sounding “fragrance.” I sprayed my countertops with the […]

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As a Pilates teacher, my clients are often surprised when I tell them that in addition to having a dedicated Pilates practice, I regularly lift weights.

“Pilates can make you stronger, so why would you want to do both?” they ask me.

While it’s true that both Pilates and lifting weights can improve overall strength, each modality is better suited for addressing specific aspects of fitness. Understanding what each of these methods does well can allow you to pick the right one for you based on your individual needs and fitness goals.

For the purpose of this article, I’m defining Pilates as the comprehensive system of exercises including both mat and apparatus work and lifting weights as the general strength and conditioning work that can be done with dumbbells, kettlebells, or barbells.

With these definitions in mind, Pilates and lifting weights are both forms of resistance training, which can be used to improve muscular strength, an aspect of muscular fitness.

According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), “Resistance training is a form of physical activity that is designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a muscle or a muscle group against external resistance.” [1]

External resistance is any form of load that you use to pull or push against, including bands, medicine balls, or free weights. In Pilates, we use springs on the different Pilates apparatus as a form of external resistance. When lifting weights, we often use kettlebells, free weights, or barbells.

Muscular strength is defined as the ability to exert external force, or push and pull against resistance. When training for muscular strength, it is recommended that novice to intermediate exercises train with a load of 60 to 70 percent of their one-repetition max (1RM) for one to three sets, and that advanced exercisers train with 80 to 100 percent of their 1RM for two to six sets [1].

If you are unfamiliar with the term, a 1RM is the maximum weight you can lift for a single repetition of a given exercise. There are different calculations that you can use to estimate a 1RM.

There are many styles of Pilates, but if you’re training the on the equipment you can expect to perform one to three sets of an exercise against moderate spring resistance. The same can apply when lifting weights. This means that if you are new to exercise, both modalities can easily fill the requirements for building muscular strength.

Additionally, there are numerous exercises in both modalities that target all parts of the body to give you a well-rounded strength workout, so which one you choose would really depend on your personal preferences.

However, there is a limit to how much spring resistance you have available to you in Pilates, so if you are a more advanced mover, at some point you may want to start lifting heavier loads to progress in overall strength.

To put this into context, the one Pilates exercise where you could use all of the springs to strengthen your legs involves lying on your back, which decreases the amount of strength required to push against the load. When lifting weights, however, you have numerous implement options and exercises available to externally load the legs, including barbell back squats or goblet squats using a dumbbell or a kettlebell.

Training for Muscular Endurance and Core Strength

Pilates and lifting weights can both help with muscular endurance, or “the ability of a muscle or a muscle group to repeatedly exert a submaximal resistance” [1]. In life, this translates to being able to perform a repetitive task, such as walking, over a longer period of time.

Training for muscular endurance involves performing an exercise using lighter resistance with higher repetitions. The general recommendation is performing 10 to 25 repetitions of an exercise with a load of less than 70 percent of your 1RM for two to four sets [1].

While Pilates exercises traditionally utilize lower repetitions, the method does include moments that would build muscular endurance. For example, footwork on the reformer involves using your legs to press the carriage out and in for multiple sets of 10. You could also choose to lift weights to improve muscular endurance, by making the conscious choice to pick a lighter weight and perform higher repetitions of certain exercises.

Finally, both can be utilized to build core strength. I understand that Pilates theoretically has cornered the market on this. However, the core is a muscle group like any other and both modalities have numerous exercises to target this area of the body.

Those are the primarily similarities between the two modalities. Now, let’s get into what each does especially well.

Lifting weights is excellent for the following applications:

Hypertrophy Training

Hypertrophy, which is probably what body building is best known for, is the act of training to make your muscles bigger.

There are multiple ways to induce hypertrophy, but the general recommendation is to perform a high volume of work with moderate loads and rest periods. According to the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, when participants performed six to 12 repetitions of an exercise at 65 to 85 percent of their 1RM with a rest period of 60 seconds, it created the greatest stimulation of testosterone and growth hormone, which correlates with hypertrophy [2].

Many lifting programs are created with hypertrophy in mind and include recommendations for multiple sets and rest periods. However, a typical Pilates workout is low volume with little to no rest periods and involves flowing, back to back movements. This means that it isn’t well designed for hypertrophy.

If you wanted to increase your overall muscle mass or appear more muscular, then lifting weights would be better option than Pilates to help you reach that goal.

Improved Grip Strength

Unless you’ve experienced a hand injury, you probably haven’t thought much about your grip strength. However, a strong grip can reduce the odds of having forearm and hand issues related to computer work and has even been associated with a decreased risk of mortality as you get older [3].

Lifting weights naturally lends itself to developing the muscles in the forearms and hands, thus improving grip strength, because you have to hold onto the weights to physically lift them.

This is different than in Pilates, where your hands are typically holding handles or soft straps and the resistance occurs by controlling spring tension rather than having to grip and lift a heavy object.

Loading the Skeleton Upright in Gravity

Lifting weights is also an excellent way to load your skeleton in gravity, because many of the traditional exercises, such as deadlifts or lunges, are performed standing. In some cases, you quite literally place a load against your skeleton, such as when you do a barbell back squat.

Not only does this type of work help you build the functional strength to navigate daily life, but it is also beneficial as a protective measure against osteoporosis, and in some cases, can be used a tool to minimize the effects of it.

This isn’t to say that practicing Pilates on the equipment won’t help you build functional strength. However, most of the resistance that we use in Pilates is spring-based, which means you are constantly receiving feedback from it.

This is different from lifting a weight, which doesn’t offer the same amount of feedback and more closely matches the type of resistance you might have to push or pull against in daily life.

Additionally, many Pilates exercises are performed lying down or seated, which doesn’t transfer as directly to functional movement patterns that are performed in standing.

For example, squatting while holding a weight in front of you more closely mimics picking up a kitchen aid mixer from the bottom cabinet, than lying on your back pushing your feet against springs.

Conversely, here are some of the specific benefits from practicing Pilates:

Hip and Shoulder Mobility and Stability

Pilates can be an excellent way to improve your mobility and stability, because many of the exercises involve exploring large ranges of motion with feedback from the springs, while your torso and limbs are supported by the Pilates equipment or the pulley system that is attached to the equipment.

This environment is particularly helpful for addressing mobility at the hips and shoulders, because it’s easier to explore and learn how to control large ranges of motion when our limbs feel supported, or when we are lying on our backs and don’t have to organize our torso against gravity. This feedback is also known as closed chain.

For the most part, free weight exercises take place in an open chain, because you have to navigate the weight without any support or feedback from a spring or a pulley system. As a result, you won’t be able to move in as large a range of motion, because you will have to work harder to control how your body moves against the resistance.

This type of movement is also beneficial for improving stability, because our stabilizers, or the small postural muscles that control where our joints are in space, respond best to lower loads and higher repetitions.

While you can incorporate stability exercises into your lifting program, Pilates lends itself to stability work, because the loads are lower and it demands that control how your joints move in different positions and ranges of motion for a sustained period of time.

Spinal Mobility

Traditional weight lifting exercises require that you maintain spinal stiffness to safely manage the heavier loads. While this is an important skill, it’s beneficial to have a spine that can both manage heavy loads and move well through all the spinal positions, including flexion, extension, side bending, and rotation.

Many of the Pilates exercises involve spinal articulation and moving the spine through the different planes of motion. Additionally, because the loads place upon the spine are lower, this is a safe and comfortable place to explore these movements and the spring tension can help facilitate better movement in the areas of the spine that might be stiff from having to sit for long periods of time at a desk.

Again, this isn’t to say that you couldn’t incorporate spinal mobility exercises into a lifting routine. However, this type of mobility work is built into the Pilates repertoire and the closed chain feedback from the springs can make it feel more accessible.

Increased Proprioception and Body Awareness

Any type of movement practice can increase proprioception, or the ability to feel where your joints are in space. However, it is easier to build proprioception in a closed chain environment, which as I mentioned above is the majority of the Pilates equipment work.

Increasing proprioception can reduce feelings of stiffness, discomfort, and pain, while improving overall movement patterns. It can also mitigate the risk of injury, because it encourages a greater understanding of how you are moving through space.

In a post-rehab setting, Pilates can feel like a supportive and gentle way to reintroduce movement or loading in an area that might be guarded as a result of fear of pain or reinjury.

This closed chain environment can also be helpful for improving a movement pattern where you have limited mobility or stability, because you are able to work more specifically around the restricted area with more options for movement regressions.

Once the movement is mastered in a closed chain environment, it sets the stage for successfully moving in an open chain environment, such as traditional lifting exercises.

Conclusion

Personally, I’ve found that Pilates has given me the body awareness and mobility to progress more quickly when lifting weights, while lifting weights has made advanced Pilates exercises that I previously struggled with feel effortless.

This is to say that there is no perfect or best system of exercise and that there are numerous benefits to cross training and exploring multiple movement modalities. What’s most important is that you consider what type of exercise you enjoy that best matches your goals.

References

1. American College of Sports Medicine, Resistance Training, https://www.acsm.org/docs/brochures/resistance-training.pdf
2. Schoenfeld BJ, The Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training, The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 24(10):2857-72 · October 2010
   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46288878_The_Mechanisms_of_Muscle_Hypertrophy_and_Their_Application_to_Resistance_Training
3. Granic A, Davies K, Jagger C, Dodds RM, Kirkwood TBL, Sayer AA, Initial level and rate of change in grip strength predict all-cause mortality in very old adults, Age and Ageing, Volume 46, Issue 6, 1 November 2017, Pages 970–976, https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article/46/6/970/3854660

A message from GGS…

Understanding how to get more results in less time so you actually enjoy exercise and can have a life outside of the gym isn’t hard, you just have to understand the Blueprint and be willing to trust the process.

Tell me how!

The post Why Pilates and Lifting Weights Aren’t Mutually Exclusive appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.

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The last grocery man to capture America’s collective heart might’ve been Mr. Hooper, the bow-tie wearing owner of Sesame Street‘s corner store — and that was in, like, 1982. But that all changed during the season premiere of The Bachelorette when we were introduced to Joe Amabile.

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In the past year, I’ve been to Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and have had at least a half-dozen layovers in the Reykjavik airport. I am obsessed with Scandinavia for a lot of reasons that aren’t limited to their unending supplies of both attractive citizens and attractive office furnishings. I also love the prevalence of Oatly-brand products, the oat-based milk alternative that was developed by an innovative, environmentally-friendly group of Swedes.

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When it comes to deciding what to cook, our guidelines are usually pretty simple. Obviously we want a meal that’s as tasty as possible, but we also want food that’s kinda healthy and makes us feel good — all without costing a fortune.

And while we all have own whole idea of what healthy looks like, these are the go-to meals our editors rely on when they want to eat well without killing their food budget for the week. Maybe you’ll pick up an idea or two from the mix!

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Serving tender, aromatic lamb biryani for dinner (especially during Ramadan) just got easier, thanks to everyone’s favorite kitchen gadget: the Instant Pot. Because the popular electric pressure cooker releases steam at the end of the cook time, it mimics the traditional Indian “dum” style of cooking, in which a protein (in this case, lamb) is cooked slowly in steam.

The result is homemade lamb biryani ready in a fraction of the time, served with fluffy basmati rice that cooks right along with it.

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The tricky thing about fiber is that it’s not a monolith. There are dozens of varieties. Some of them perform similar functions in the body, but others have extremely unique effects. Some rend your colonic lining to stimulate lubrication. Some turn into gelatinous slurries. But we can’t talk about fiber without understanding that the word describes a variety of compounds. As such, anyone making declarative statements about “fiber” without differentiating between the different types and their effects isn’t being accurate (except for me in that exact sentence).

This leads to a lot of confusion. People make blanket statements that might be true for some types of fibers and incorrect for others. 

Today’s post will attempt to illuminate the bulk of the matter. I’ll go through some of the most common misconceptions and myths about fiber from all corners of the dietary world. Whether you’re keto, low-carb, vegan, carnivore, or breatharian, you’ll find something to love and hate in today’s post.

1) “Fiber makes you full.”

This is theoretically sound. Mechanoreceptors in the gut respond to physical fullness by triggering satiety hormones. Big loads of insoluble fiber increase intestinal bulk, while some soluble fibers can gel up and increase the size of the stuff moving through your gut. Both result in added pressure on gut mechanoreceptors.

How does it work in practice?

A review found that while soluble fiber reduced appetite more than insoluble fibers, the overall effect on body weight was quite small, unimpressive, and inconsistent. More recently, a soluble fiber supplement failed to have any effect on satiety hormones, appetite, and subsequent food intake for the first 150 minutes after eating in healthy adults. The plucky researchers aren’t giving in, however, promising “further research… to quantify how soluble fiber influences appetite several hours after consumption.”

Resistant starch, an indigestible type of starch that colonic bacteria ferment, on the other hand does appear to increase satiety in humans, reducing food intake by 15%.

2) “Every diet needs the same amount of fiber.”

As it turns out, fiber becomes more critical the more carbohydrates you eat.

Soluble fiber slows down digestion, reducing the rate at which energy is absorbed. This can be helpful for people with glucose intolerance or type 2 diabetes by slowing the release of glucose into the blood. 

The byproducts of fiber fermentation in the colon by gut bacteria often have beneficial effects on carbohydrate metabolism. Eating resistant starch, for example, lowers the postprandial blood glucose spike. This reduction may also extend to subsequent meals, indicating it’s honing your ability to handle glucose. Everyone can benefit from better glucose management, but it’s far more critical for people eating significant amounts of glucose.

3) “All the healthiest people studied eat fiber!”

Observational studies are fun and all, but they’re not a good way to prove the healthfulness of fiber. Looking at fiber intake is just about the best way to capture the “healthy user”—that person who does everything right, like walk daily, exercise regularly, abstain from tobacco, avoid binge drinking, and eat whole foods rather than refined ones. It doesn’t say anything definitive about the health effects of the specific dietary variable they’re observing.

That said, the fact that most healthy populations eat whole foods containing fiber indicates that fiber probably isn’t actively harmful.

4) “Fiber is just roughage for big impressive poops. No functional use.”

That’s mostly true of insoluble fiber, which is pure waste material that shreds your intestinal lining and increases stool volume.

There’s considerable evidence that people with type 2 diabetes can really benefit from prebiotic fiber supplementation:

• Chicory-derived inulin, a potent prebiotic fiber, reduces liver enzymes and HbA1c, improves blood pressure and fasting glucose, and increases calcium homeostasis.
• Inulin improves immune markers and glycemic control.
• Resistant starch lowers insulin resistance and inflammation.

A review of studies found that while the prebiotic inulin reduces LDL-C (an imperfect biomarker of dubious utility) in all populations, only in type 2 diabetics does inulin improve HDL and blood glucose control. 

Prebiotic fiber may also help certain patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The usual therapy for NAFLD patients is weight loss. You lose enough body fat elsewhere and the fat you’ve accumulated in the liver starts to disappear, too.

What about lean NAFLD patients without any real weight to lose?

In lean patients with NAFLD, a synbiotic—blend of prebiotic fiber with probiotic bacteria—reduces liver fat and fibrosis by improving inflammatory markers. Pre-emptive consumption of prebiotics may even protect against the development of NAFLD.

Another function of fiber that occurs in everyone is the production of short chain fatty acids by gut bacteria. When gut bacteria ferment prebiotic fiber, they produce short chain fatty acids, many of which have beneficial metabolic effects.

Butyrate is the most important short chain fatty acid. It fuels colon cells and may prevent colon cancer. Its relationship with existing colon cancer cells is more controversial. Read more about that here.

One interesting line of research is studying the interaction between the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate and the short chain fatty acid butyrate. Initial indications suggest that the two may have synergistic effects on cognition, inflammation, and overall health. That alone may be a reason to make sure you get prebiotic fiber on your ketogenic diet, just to hedge your bets.

Now, might a low-carb or ketogenic diet work better for people with type 2 diabetes than adding fiber to their normal diet? Sure. Could such a diet reduce the need for fiber? Yeah, I could see it. The same goes for NAFLD—low carb diets are also excellent in this population. And perhaps people who aren’t eating so many carbs don’t need the short chain fatty acids to improve their metabolic function and insulin sensitivity. But the evidence for fiber in type 2 diabetes and NAFLD stands, and I suspect short chain fatty acid production matters even in low carb or keto dieters.

5) “Fiber cures constipation.”

It depends.

In one 2012 study, patients with idiopathic constipation—constipation without apparent physiological or physical causes—had to remove fiber entirely to get pooping again. Those who kept eating a bit or a lot of it continued to have trouble evacuating. The more fiber they ate, the worse their constipation (and bloating) remained.

A 2012 review found that while fiber may increase stool frequency, it doesn’t improve stool quality, treatment success, or painful defecation. Similarly, glucomannan, a soluble fiber, moderately improves defecation frequency in constipated kids, but has no effect on stool quality or overall treatment success.

However, galactooligosaccharides, a class of prebiotic fiber, do appear to improve idiopathic constipation. And inulin, another prebiotic fiber, improves bowel function and stool consistency in patients with constipation.

6) “Fiber aggravates gut issues.”

Some say fiber cures gut issues like IBS and IBD. Others say fiber aggravates them. Who’s right? Maybe both.

Both IBS-D (irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea) and IBS-C (irritable bowel syndrome with constipation) patients can benefit from soluble fiber (psyllium) while insoluble fiber (bran) is far less effective.

Wheat bran works okay for IBS, if the patients can tolerate it. They tend to tolerate something like hydrolyzed guar gum much better.

For IBD, the evidence is mixed. One survey of Crohn’s patients found that those eating more fiber (23 grams/day) had fewer flareups than those eating less (10 grams/day), while colitis patients reported no difference in symptoms based on fiber intake.

On the other hand, studies indicate that a low-FODMAP diet, which eliminates most sources of fiber, especially fermentable prebiotic fiber, is an effective treatment for IBS and IBD. Low-FODMAP diets have been shown to reduce bloating, abdominal pain, quality of life, and overall symptoms in intestinal disorders.

These contrary results may not even be contradictory. If your gut’s messed up, one solution could be to add back in the fibers you’re missing. Another could be to take all the fiber out and start from scratch.

7) “Fiber reduces nutrient absorption.”

For a long time, the consensus was that fiber tends to bind with minerals in the gut and thus reduce their absorption. These days, researchers understand that many of these fiber-bound minerals become available after fermentation in the colon.

Another wrinkle is that dietary fiber often comes with phytic acid, which binds minerals and prevents their absorption. Take wheat bran. Often deemed “wheat fiber” and lambasted for its tendency to bind minerals, wheat bran isn’t just fiber. It’s also a significant source of mineral-binding phytic acid.

Prebiotics increase absorption of magnesium, heme iron, and calcium. This makes sense. Even if the prebiotics are binding minerals, they release them once they reach the colon for fermentation by gut bacteria.

Fiber may reduce absorption of plant polyphenols, however.

8) “No one needs fiber.”

On the surface, this appears to be a sound conclusion. The human host digestive system cannot digest it. The majority of the fiber we eat gets pooped out as literal waste material. Certain classes of fiber may improve our gut health, but no one is keeling over from a lack of fiber in their diet.

Some have argued that a sterile gut is ideal if you have the right diet, that employing vast hordes of gut bacteria is just an adaptive measure taken to deal with a substandard diet full of roughage. The problem is that most people throughout history and prehistory have eaten that roughage, employed those gut bacteria, utilized the metabolites those bacteria produce. I suspect thinking long and hard before you consider it immaterial to human health.

If that were true, why would breast milk—the only food specifically designed for human consumption—contain loads of indigestible oligosaccharides that feed the growing gut biome? Even if it turns out that feeding the gut biome is only vital during infancy, that’s still a population of humans who truly need fiber.

Here’s where I come down: Fiber is an intrinsic part of many whole plant foods (and even whole animal foods, if it turns out that our gut bacteria can utilize “animal fibers” like other top carnivores). The Primal-friendly plants, the ones our ancestors grew up eating approximations of, like fruits, vegetables, roots, and tubers, are mostly higher in soluble fiber and lower in insoluble fiber. The only way to get huge doses of insoluble fiber these days is with supplementation or by eating grains. I don’t suggest eating grains or supplementing with insoluble fiber. I do suggest eating fruits, vegetables, roots, and tubers (while managing your carbs).

As for the carnivore issue, I’m open to the possibility that a properly-constructed carnivorous diet (which may, remember, include gristly animal fiber) obviates the need for plant fiber, prebiotic or otherwise. I’m not confident enough to try it myself, though.

Do I think everyone should be supplementing with prebiotic fiber? No. I add inulin to my Primal Fuel protein powder, mostly to improve mouth-feel but also to feed beneficial microbes and increase butyrate production. I add prebiotic cassava fiber to my collagen bars, again to improve texture and feed gut bacteria. And I’ll sometimes use raw potato starch for its considerable resistant starch content, often just mixing it into sparkling water and drinking it straight. But for the most part, the fiber I eat is incidental to the foods I consume. Berries, non-starchy vegetables, jicama, garlic, onions, green bananas, nuts—these are all foods rich in fiber, particularly prebiotic fiber, and I eat a fair amount of them while remaining low-carb and often keto.

As you can see, the fiber story isn’t simple. At all. There are many variables to consider. If you’re confused and unsure of how to think about fiber, you’re on the right track.

What do you think, folks? How has fiber helped or harmed you? I’d love to hear from everyone.

Take care and be well.

The post 8 Misconceptions About Fiber appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.