Do you like to drink? And unless you're like a few of my college buddies I'm talking about during the day, while at work or at school. I guess it's not so much a question of 'do you drink?' but rather 'what' do you drink? But you have to admit asking the question the other way got a number of you checking the calendar to see how many more days until the weekend. But seriously though when it comes to our nutrition it seems as though more emphasis is put on what to eat rather than what to drink. And this will trip up many people. How does it trip them up? By drinking things that don't support whatever their goal is. And in this case the goal could be weight loss, weight gain and or performance. So let's take a quick look at each of these to see what you should be drinking. Goal #1 - Weight Loss If you're like most people that go to the gym then your goal is weight loss. And as soon as we can agree that six packs are made in the kitchen and not the gym we'll be way further ahead than if we think we can go for extra walk after dinner to make up for the cherry strudel you had for a mid-afternoon snack. But even if we realize that our nutrition plays the most important role in our quest for the leanest physique we need to be aware that our choice of beverage can severely impact our goal. So what should be drinking? The best choice are water and green tea. There are no calories and the polyphenols and caffeine in the tea may help with your weight loss goal. Just be careful to monitor your caffeine intake and the potential for...

So we all know the importance of the pre-workout meal. Well, maybe I'm jumping the gun. I should say that I hope we all know the importance of the pre-workout meal.And I should qualify the position I'm coming from on this topic. This is based upon training for performance and athletic excellence. The reason I make the distinction is that there is a growing movement and popularity for intermittent fasting when it comes to weight loss and body composition changes. I'm not referring to this type of goal.When it comes to pre-workout nutrition for a performance goal wer're looking to hydrate and top up the body's supply of glycogen. Glycogen is the body's stored form of carbohydrate which can be found in the muscle and liver. If we have some carbs before training this can help 'spare' muscle glycogen or minimize the depletion of this energy source.And while carbs are our best source to accomplish this we want to make sure to keep the pre-workout levels of fats and protein a little lower. This may seem contrary to what you'll see many 'meat heads' doing as they suck on a protein shake while warming up on the treadmill. Don't follow this lead. Too much protein slows gastric emptying and impairs performance.But while we hear all the time how important it is to eat before training, how important is it really? How much does it impact your performance? Can one meal really make a difference?Consider the following session I had with a client this week. This client wears a heart rate monitor while training and of course we are monitoring loads, recovery times and outputs on energy system work. And for this particular workout the client had not had a pre-workout meal.Here's what happened.When we got to some of the conditioning sets...

Often times the seasons dictate what we do for exercise. When it is nice outside people tend to move their workouts outdoors and take advantage of the warmer weather. Around here you see more people boating, golfing, biking and doing triathlons.But when the weather gets cold we move indoors and get in more of our gym-based workouts. I'm not saying that's the way it should be, only that's what many around here tend to do.Even though we may move indoors for a lifting workout there are still somethings we can do outdoors and can actually only be done outdoors in the winter. Consider the outdoor skating rink downtown. Or going up to the ski hill. Going snowshoeing, tabogoning or even just going for a run and you can see that cold weather doesn't have to mean all activity stops.If you're going to do some exercise this winter make sure to check out the following video where I give you a number of tips for going outdoors this winter for some activity. Now there was one more tip I didn't cover in the video that I want to share with you. And this has to do with supplementation. If you're in the habit of taking omega-3 (which I think is a great thing by the way) you don't want to jump up your dosage too much during the winter months. Especially if you plan on going up to the hill. Here's why.You see omega-3 has blood thinning properties which is part of the reason it is effective in lowering blood pressure in some. In the winter however the relative humidity is much lower than in the summer.Basically warm air holds more water than cold air. So in the winter our tissues lose water to the environment as we have a higher humidity than the...