Flavour Profile Menu

There are still those who think that eating clean means no flavour, eating foods you dislike and having to deal with complicated recipes and cooking tools.  WRONG

Not only is that incorrect but you can eat with flavour, clean and lean, improve your health habits, improve your nutrient intake, enjoy food and making your meals by simply applying your favourite flavour profiles.

You know what flavours you tend to go for and by keeping some staple herbs, spices and seasonings around you can make fast healthy dishes easily.  You may find yourself wanting to eat at home more often just because of how good it tastes, you know what's in there and once you make a few dishes that you love you won't find anyone who can make it just like you want it.

If you are a creature of habit you can stick with your flavour preferences but if you enjoy trying new flavours and changing it up you can easily do so by trying other flavour profiles or working with fusions.  Many chefs are working fusion cooking by combining flavour profiles to find new twists to taste.

Here is an example of some basic food items that are affordable, easy to prepare and very familiar. These food items are chosen due to their bang for nutrients, health impact, promoting fat loss and lean muscle gain goals.

All the seasoning items listed are clean and lean.  Just the list alone tells you there is a lot of choice for eating clean while liking how it tastes but the list is a short general example of the most common, easier to access items.  The combinations become endless!

Onion family can fall under many of the categories depending how they are prepared.  Edible flowers can be added to dishes giving it a floral twist for those with a unique palette.

You can apply these flavour profiles to your mains and sides, you can also apply one profile to your main while your side has another.  Many of these do compliment each other, the blend and combinations you choose is what will lead you to discover your flavour profile preference range.

The hidden gold is that by eating closer to nature you are fighting so many of today's health issues. The food items and seasoning items all have healing and health positive properties.

Take this outline, and add your flavorings to the make up the dish!

	Protein	Sides
Meal 1	Eggs / Whites or Tofu/vegan alternative	Fruit
Meal 2	Greens and Fruit in a smoothie or salad	Nuts and seeds
Meal 3	3-5 oz of lean protein or vegan alternative/legumes	Dark greens
Meal 4	1-2 cup grain of choice or a blend (quinoa, rice, amaranth, barley etc)	Top with a fruit and veggie chopped salsa
Meal 5	Same as meal 3	Same as meal 3 but add some other colors like orange, red and purple veggies.
Meal 6	2-3 oz protein (greek yogurt or eggs included)	Nut butter on rice cakes

Eat a meal every 2-3 hours, try to get in 2-4 liters of water per day.  Use the flavorings you like to flavor all the above food items to turn them into dishes you like.  Try new combos so that you have a few food profile favorites for the same food item to give you variety.  This will help you establish your herb and spice base station in your kitchen while getting you familiar with all their applications.

Here's a handy chart I created and a few more posts below that, which come from Cooksmarts.com.

Spicy	Sweet	Salty	Sour	Bitter
Fresh Whole Hot Peppers in Various variety Cheyenne, black, pink, white table pepper and peppercorns Mustard Seed, powder and Dijon mustard Arugula Chilies and Chili powders Hot Sauces and Piri Piri Raw Radishes Wasabi and horseradish Harissa Watercress Raw Garlic Smoke flavorings and hickory, paprika Ginger	Cinnamon Stevia Fruits (Dried, Fresh, Frozen) Caraway seed Vanilla Bean Honey, Agave, Syrups like maple and other natural saps Balsamic and apple cider vinegar Yellow and Orange vegetables like yams, squash, carrots, corn. Snap Peas Fennel Parsnips Sweet wines Saffron Coriander Basil Some nuts and nut oils Ginger, cilantro Curry, cumin, mint, cardamom, thyme, hibiscus, tamarind, Chinese all spice Olive oil	Pink and Sea Salts Parmesan used sparingly Pickled Vegetables Anchovies Various Miso Seaweed and Sea Vegetables Fish, Soy, Worcestershire sauces Tomatoes Mushrooms Smoke flavors and hickory Umami Some nuts and nut oils Curry, rosemary Capers Tamarind All Spice, Chinese 5 spice	Citrus and their juices (lemon, lime, grapefruit) Vinegars of the many varieties Yogurt and sour cream Pickles vegetables Tomato’s and tomato paste Lemongrass Ginger Curry, cumin Dill Hibiscus Citric Acids and Umami	Bitter greens such as dandelion, radicchio, endive Grapefruit Cacao Coffee Beer Dry wines Citrus peels Paprika Some Nut oils Curry, cumin, oregano Olives and oil Gourds Escarole and chicory Tea Rapinni Tumeric Dark Chocolate

Visit lindacusmano.com to order your own personalized custom menu plan.

Workout Wednesday Oly Bar

For those who love the BAR!  

This workout is all old skool and all Oly Bar.

Each barbell exercise is outlined and described with photos.

Some of you may want to use a body bar which comes in lighter sizes than the traditional 45lb Olympic bar and have padding surrounding the bar.  

You can also find lighter oly bars (10/25/35lb) in some gyms or can use the EZ curl bar (18.5lb avg) for these exercises.

Some of you may even still have your old York or Weider set which has a 10lb bar.

Your gym may carry the barbell rack with weights from 10-200lb barbells already set up.

Either way, you can find tools to perform this workout even if you cannot handle the normal Oly bar weight.

The benefits of this piece of equipment is the core strength you enhance in your stability for execution of most of the moves.  Of course in turn your stability is also trained along with the core strength  Its a fitness tool you can find in almost any fitness facility or center and easily bought for the home in varieties as a few shown in the intro pic.

If all you had was an Oly bar you could easily get your regular workouts fulfilled and attain amazing results.  Its a gym all its own.

Use the Knurling to your advantage.  Most bars have etched areas of the bar called Knurling and it is meant to help your grip.  Its important to have sturdy handle of this bar when training.  Chalk can be handy if you are a powerlifter but not needed for this workout.

Try this mixed into your regular program or change things up with this for a week or so doing it 3 times per week.

For personalized custom workouts visit lindacusmano.com 

Meal Plan Monday Mains

Lean main dishes will usually consist of poultry or fish unless you are vegan.  I am often asked about how to make these dishes in new, fun, delicious ways that are not too expensive or time consuming.

Even though there is a plethora of information available at your fingertips to find what you need, many people express that is can be overwhelming.

A few things that you can take from the bodybuilding lifestyle especially if you find you do not have the time to prep and cook fresh on a daily basis:

Pick a Prep Day

I would usually do 2 per week, if I was on contest prep but this is about your life schedule so you decide if you need one or 2 prep days per week then make some lean foods on those designated days. Prep maybe not cooking but just cleaning chopping and prepping to cook for the few days ahead.

You will see with some of the recipes below all you need is the protein pre grilled to put together the dish, but many of these are short prep and cook that can be done on the fly.  How much of the recipe you prep ahead is up to you, many times you can have things pre chopped and in a container, be creative.  Just avoid doing it without using lemon or proper storage as needed to avoid problems with things you are going to prep fresh and leave fresh in the fridge.  Many times you do get 2-4 days grace on most items nicely, some more.

Storage

Another key is to make enough for a few days of each main, and freeze it.  You can use single serving storage containers making it a no brainer, defrost, warm and eat.  You don't have to eat the same thing each day.  If you pick one prep day, do it all then, pick a few dishes to prep and store you then have some variety to pull out of your freezer at a moment's notice.  The fact that these can be used for lunch or dinner and some even use these for breakfast if they are not particular about specific breakfast foods makes this handy.  Another idea is to pack some mains into snack size for those middle of the meal snacks.

Find your GO TO dishes

Once you have done this for a few weeks you will find the dishes that work best for you, will try more new ones along the way but will develop a repertoire of mains that will help you stay on track with nutrition, fitness and your daily schedule.  You will get your flow in organization and will love trying new dishes.  Once you start cooking your own food, if you are one who has not, you find that you will always crave certain things only YOU can make just how you like.

Pretty easy right?  Try it, you will find you will get into a lifestyle pattern that fits nicely.

Here is my suggestion for a selection of mains you may want to try that are available at cleaneating.com with many more, from meats to vegan choices plus sauce and dip ideas that can help add clean flavor to your dishes ;))

Orange Mango Chicken Foil Packs

Chicken BLT (Bean, Lettuce & Tomato) with Smoky Tomato Dressing

Apple Cider–Braised Chicken with Parsnips & Kale

Sole & Summer Vegetable Parchment Packets

Hoisin Chile Shrimp with Green Beans & Walnuts

Grilled Fish Tacos with Spicy Citrus Slaw & Sriracha Crema

White Bean & Eggplant Salad

Vibrant Veggie Bundles with 4-Ingredient Sweet & Sour Dipping Sauce

Roasted Beet Wellington

Bitter Greens Salad with Egg

Grilled Asparagus Salad with Feta Hazelnut Crumble

Golden Beet & Green Bean Salad

Check out my nutrition and meal plan ebooks at bodyrushpersonaltraining.com to order your own plan.

Pyramid Workout Wednesday

Pyramid Workout Wednesday 

This week I am giving you a pyramid style workout to try out.  This will push past plateaus, increase results and shock some good sculpt into you!

Pyramids can be designed with 3 sets or more.  Usually you will see a 5 set pyramid.  You can pyramid the volume and reps in different ways depending on the results you seek.

You can go with reps like so 8/10/12/10/8 for example or go from higher to lower to higher.  You can also use same weight to push through or adjust it up or down with each set which is the traditional version.  Usually its more weight on the lower reps and lowered slightly on the higher reps.  

I enjoy the challenge of using this type of pyramid I just wrote about except I look for lean muscle growth so I will use a weight that already challenges my 8 reps, and try to use it for the higher rep step ups.  I found this works really well for pump, sculpt and lean muscle gain.

This one is a basic all body that you can try out mixed into your regular program or try it 1-3 times per week on its own, depending on your fitness level.

For full custom workouts beyond this sample I posted today, check out lindacusmano.com.

Meal Plan Monday NEW 2017

Mondays blog posts are now going to include meal plans, recipes and nutrition on a weekly basis and todays post you get a meal plan that you can try out into spring.

Protein is part of the plan every 2-3 hours with large amounts of water also highlighted.
You can decide how loosely or tightly you decide to follow this but it can help you get into a pattern of eating and give you ideas for ways to adjust your eating toward your goals based on the format shown in this outline.

Recipes are added in to for you to try out and those meals are included in the menu.
Alterations are always something most people need in order to adjust the plan to be custom and personally fit your goals so this meal plan is no different.

Use this as a learning tool and guideline.  Enjoy the results that will inevitably come even if you loosely apply the ideas here and simply try a few things from it.

You can download and print the document below.

ENJOY!!

You can find more meal plan ideas beyond this sample and nutrition ebooks at my bookstores: Bodyrushpersonaltraining.com 
or find some of my ebook titles at Amazon
amazon.com/author/lindacusmano
(there are some items at Body Rush that you cannot find at my Amazon Library)

Athleisure & 2017 Fitness Trends

Athleisure in the park in my Ceres8,com activewear

Welcome to the year 2017 in the Millennial Generation.  Millennialism is not generational though, it's a vibe you will find with those of all ages.  Even GenXers like me have picked up on some Millennial tendencies.

Some of the 2017 Trends in Health and fitness are pretty cool and those are the ones highlighted in this post.

#NoMakeup Movement

Celebrities are posting #nomakeup pics with this hashtag proudly pushing the No MakeUp Movement.  Natural and organic is the way to go.  Aside from being easy and time saving it saves on cosmetic costs.  There are many options for safe cosmetics that won't hurt your skin or body but they can run up a bill.  I love getting dolled up for photo shoots and love the look, but I also think being without makeup is real and that eliminates the essence of FAKE.  We have enough fake smiles and 'polite' pleasantry frauds out there in hoards today, so it's nice and refreshing to see a more REALness among girls catching on as a trend.

#Athleisure

Yes it's ok to wear yoga pants in your daily life!  If you do not agree then don't wear them, but there are reasons behind why women, MANY women, love to and do wear active wear outside of the gym. Not everyone works a wallstreet job, many now work for themselves and at home, not everyone is into being an 'image' all day, every day, fake.  Its real for many to go for comfort and cost effective fitness clothing as an everyday choice, with no makeup!  Many ladies today work what used to be considered non traditional jobs, working with their hands and 'man' tools in industry and self employment, getting their hands in the mud so to speak.

Health Tonics

Kambucha and other brews, wine with herb elixors, juicing and teas are very hot.  This is a wonderful trend, highlighting raw, whole foods, organics and REAL.  This eliminates all processing and gets you from nature to your system in a few small treatments.  

Rather than just juicing, people are now brewing and adding extras to their smoothies and juices beyond bodybuilding and eating healthier.  Focus is on details that are a custom fit to the individuals personal health needs at that moment.  Tweak your nutrient intake with some great ideas along this line.

Drinking Hard is Passe

The social scene is sobering up with more people opting for non alcohol beverages and more attention to the social aspect, the people they are with rather than the buzz.

Drinking as an excuse to get out, as a way to feel more confident interacting is common but it should be something you look at, you should not need to go about things that way and living with it affects your life as this avoidance habit and numbing habit will be your go to in other ways in your life. Look carefully and you may notice, if you are one who can be real with yourself.  Many who drink daily seem to do so for reasons other than just enjoyment on occasion.........they say its fun but if you need booze to have fun.......need I say more?

Nesting rather than going out

There are many reasons more people opt to stay home, the driving, parking or transportation there, costs that up, dealing with partiers who are over exuberant in your space at events.......being comfy at home and the trend of entertaining.

Cooking and entertaining is very common and not all frew frew any longer.  Dinner parties with formalities happen but are not the majority of entertaining anymore.  Its safer, cheaper and often tastier to enjoy a few friends at home for the game or celebration.  Cooking has become a trend itself and EVERYONE is trying it, concocting recipes from Food Channels and online that they want to share and be proud of!

More people are also opting to stay home alone more often, enjoying all our comforts in this day and age.  There really is no comfort or need you cannot establish in your living space.

Which of these trends do you fall into already? Which might you adapt into your lifestyle?

Workout Wednesday All Body Basic

Training at home in my Ceres8.com fitness gear -
use promo code LindaC for 25% off of this already low cost well made activewear.

Welcome to the NEW 2017 

Workout Wednesdays

Every Wednesday I will be posting a free workout that you can download, save and print for your use.  

You will also want to check out my 'Meal Plan Mondays' posts where I will be posting weekly on Mondays free meal plans and recipes that you can download, save and print for your use!  

This is a basic full body workout with easy fitness tools for at home or gym workouts.  Start off a day per week up to 3 times per week for a month.  Then it's time to change things up, either with sets, reps, weight, switch up with some of the exercises or a whole new plan,
You can also try super or tri setting these exercises or switch up from straight sets to pyramids, ascending or descending reps/wt, or drop sets where the reps go up and the weight lowers for each set for full failure.

You will find all you need, with demo pics and exercise descriptions to help you do it right!

Take a peek at my new Amazon author page where you can find more ebook programs beyond this sample, in a variety of fitness styles for different fitness and nutrition goals.
amazon.com/author/lindacusmano