I wanted to sincerely thank you for bringing me back to my high school years while I worked out today. Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca" was so great the first time around I'm so glad I got to hear it again. And how could I have forgotten "Allstar" by Smashmouth or Sting's "Desert Rose." The term "classics" comes to mind. I couldn't help but noticed that you missed Lou Bega "Mambo No. 5" or some Enrique Inglesias though. Perhaps next time?

Thanks, with sarcasm,

Audrey

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Picture of irony today at the gym: Overweight lady standing outside the gym, smoking a cigarette and drinking a bottle of Muscle Milk...

Muscle Milk is great during workouts, I feel like I maintain or sometimes even go above what I normally do without it. So it's a nice boost without feeling weighed down. I actually drink a little before I start, a little during and then finish it off when I'm done. It doesn't have that powdery texture that other workout shakes usually do and the flavors..wow!

I usually buy the pre-made shakes but that's not to say that the powder form is not good, as well. I can do either. I just hate to clean the cups after, haha!  I can say that when I used Muscle Milk as my meal replacement, I felt full and satisfied until my next meal and maintained a nice pepped feeling.

The best part is, it comes in LIGHT and Regular formulas. So if you're trying to ADD calories, it's a great source but they haven't forgotten us calorie counters!

Benefits of using Muscle Milk Light® Ready-to-Drink

Control your cravings: Muscle Milk Light fuels your body and helps maintain healthy blood sugar levels, to stop hunger attacks in their tracks.

Good nutrition, great taste: Formulated for sustained energy and satisfaction, with a complete balance of protein and fats that promote lean muscle development.

Less is more: Muscle Milk Light builds on the proven science in original Muscle Milk, yet cuts fat and calories to promote better intelligent weight management.

3 ways to fill the gaps in your daily diet: New Muscle Milk Light RTD is available in 3 user-approved flavors, to satisfy your need for energy and your desire for great taste.

Best ways to use Muscle Milk Light® Ready-to-Drink

All-around: Integrated daily: Muscle Milk Light is a satisfying way to balance out the energy rollercoaster of your busy day at work, in the gym, or at play. Drink some mid-morning and mid-afternoon to avoid the loss of focus and fatigue that often result from low blood sugar levels.

Benefits of using Muscle Milk®

Efficient Energy Production: Lean Lipids^TM are special fats that are easily mobilized for workout energy, enhance your body's fat metabolism and promote protein synthesis, anti-inflammatory effects and mineral retention.

Muscle Growth and Repair: EvoPro^TM is a complex ratio of proteins, peptides and amino acids designed to replicate the amazing benefits of mother's milk for rapid tissue growth and repair.

Best ways to use Muscle Milk®

Before: Take one serving of Muscle Milk® one hour prior to training. Muscle Milk provides the caloric energy needed for intense workouts while flooding nutrients to hungry muscles.

After: Take Muscle Milk® within 30 minutes after workouts, games or events to shift the body from catabolic to anabolic. Muscle Milk provides nutrients to kick start the recovery process.

I challenge you to try the Muscle Milk because I think you'll find that it's a nice "treat" to reward your hard workouts. I even had a friend who I was helping to lose weight via internet tell me that he loved to have one at night when he came home from a long day. He works as an architecht so there were times he wouldn't get to workout until really late and he'd drink a shake after as his "chocolate fix" for the day. It becomes something you look forward to instead of something you try to drink as fast as you can so you don't taste it.

On a completely unrelated note, sometimes you find little treasures in unexpected places, like the trash can on the corner of 41st and Chestnut.

And no, I didn't pick this out of the trash.

They have finally done it! They have made a sports drink that was designed especially for me. The company Function prides themselves in making these drinks that are designed by physicians to combat what most of us deal with on a daily basis. My favorite of the selection is the Urban Detox. The "function" of this drink is to cleanse the lungs and sinuses from pollutants that are ingested while running around a smog filled environment. It does this by using a super antioxidant called NAC and prickly pear fruit extract. Not only does it do that they also boast it cures hangovers. Sold!

They have quite a selection, each with different functions. I have tried them all and as sceptical as I was to the validity of their design, they have won me over. I can honestly say I have felt a whole lot better since I have started drinking these as a part of my morning routine and it is not psychosomatic. Not only have my lungs and sinuses felt clearer but my Wednesday night after work beers haven't slowed me up a bit on Thursday morning. Check them out at funtiondrinks.com.

Gee, protein shakes have come a long way in the past ten to fifteen years. I remember drinking them in high school and it was everything I could do just to choke down one packet of 40g protein Myoplex shake. Of course back then I was a 150 pound teenager that shouldn't have ingested 40 grams of anything because the human body can only process so much. Today, I am older and a little wiser to what I put in my stomach and I know that if a shake is so thick that it stalls a blender, I had better not to drink it. Luckily today we have better choices of where we get our supplement protein because lets face it, drinking raw eggs like Rocky makes anyone with any sense throw up in their mouth.

I will be honest, I am the laziest person in the word when it comes to preparing protein shakes. It's a messy process that requires a blender. No shaker or hand stirring motion can break up the lumps of powder that will make a goat sick when chugging down a chocolate supplement shake. No, you have to have a blender for this and I guess that is why I am not a huge fan of the EAS Myoplex brand. I require easy, quick and a clean preparation if I am going to drink something with that much protein and no matter what Myoplex boasts, it has never mastered the easy mixing solution that I need. Plus it has so many ingredients you never know what you are really drinking. I mean, the FDA label says it is giving you 60% of your daily copper requirement. Copper? This product is really for the die hard weight lifters who have the time to measure minuet things like copper levels or appropriate calorie counts of the tens of thousands. Plus, those guys shit like six times a day and that alone makes me never want to be like that. Seriously, is this a good look?

Don't get me wrong, EAS is a great company and they have been one of the leaders in supplement research and design. I just think for people who work full time but exercise in a serious fashion, the Myoplex Meal Replacement shakes might be an overkill. It is expensive, hard to prep and sometimes it is hard to drink. But that is just my opinion.

Now this is more my speed. I lurve Cytosport Muscle Milk not only because it tastes great but it is easy to prepare. It dissolves much like those Carnation Instant Breakfast shakes and I find that pretty incredible due to the fact it has over 20 grams of protein per serving. It's design is inspired from a human mother's milk ( I try not to think too hard about....gross) which has a higher complex of amino acids and peptides that burn fat as it increases muscle growth. Why does that matter? Simple. Every time you lift weights tiny muscle fibers rip and the protein elements rebuild them making them leaner and stronger. During that process lactic acids can build up in the afflicted area causing soreness. Muscle milk's complex blend of peptides and different amino acids combat that process giving you shorter recovery time and tighter muscles. In short, you get ripped faster. So be sure to drink your Ovaltine. And by Ovaltine I mean Muscle Milk. Check the out at Cytosport.com!

It is GU! Every time I take one of these things I feel like Ivan Draco and I am training with the help of pure Soviet science. It comes in a cool space pouch and it is a shot of energy like no other. I love these things because I am a man of extremes. If I run, I run fast. If I lift, I lift hard. If I drink beer, I drink beer hard and fast. So to keep up with that aggressiveness I need to have a mid-stride boost and nothing boosts harder or faster than GU.

If you can get past the texture this is a great energy supplement. The problem is that when you need a pick-me-up, you are usually at the point of exhaustion and the last thing you want is to squeeze hot pudding in your mouth. But other than that, there isn't a drawback to GU. Nowhere else can you find a more portable and powerful kick in the rump. The one thing people should know is that GU, especially the new Roctane packs, contain a lot of caffeine so be careful of your heart and exercising in high temperatures because caffeine tends to complicate things a little.

Oh yes, Clif the hippie bars! I have always been a fan of Clif bars because they really prided themselves on being 100% organic, soy, tree hugging, peace and loving outdoors, bar of goodness and there is a part of me that really digs that. But I never considered them as anything more than an emergency ration while hiking up in the Sierra's or Yellowstone. That is until recently when I found out about builder bars and my whole opinion changed about Clif.

These are really great little bars that pack 20 grams of soy protein which is a little bit more fatty than whey, which you find in shakes. But with the fatty bad also comes the good because this little bar is full of organic goodness, fiber and 23 vitamins making it a great pre-workout bar that is not very big at all. Oh yeah, it also has a high melt factor too. So don't keep in your glove compartment like I did. Choco-fingers which led to choco-dash, which led to choco-steering wheel which then lead to choco-shirt.

Protein, as you may or may not know, is essential for optimum muscle growth. Made up of amino acids (the building blocks of muscle), a sufficient amount of protein puts your body into a nitrogen surplus, or an anabolic state, where the magic of muscle growth occurs. Without amino acids, it wouldn't even be possible to maintain, repair or build muscle. The old adage says that in order to build muscle, a weightlifter should consume one gram of protein per pound of body weight a day, regardless of whether or not it is a training day. You can eat all the egg whites, tuna and steaks you want, but the fact is that without a protein supplement its going to be difficult to achieve that total without compromising other aspects of your diet.

For this reason, I began my long and arduous search to find a powder that not only agreed with my stomach, but also tasted good. After years of trying various products, I recently decided to give Cytosport's Muscle Milk a try and let me say that I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to build lean muscle mass and lose body fat. Clearly Cytosport is not paying me to endorse their product, nor are there any affiliate marketing links provided here for which I could make a commission. The bottom line is that the product works, you get results and it tastes great.

The key is that Cytosport has combined both whey and casein protein in an effort to emulate the natural milk of a nursing mother, which some say is the gold standard anabolic formula. Muscle milk attempts to keep your anabolic window (the time in which protein synthesis occurs in your body) open longer by releasing a combination of whey (faster acting) and micellar caseins (releases protein, peptides, and amino acids more slowly). Perhaps more importantly for me is the fact that Muscle Milk is also lactose free, which allows me to digest it easily (a common complaint many weightlifters have about protein powders).

Anyway, that is my recommendation for those of you searching for an effective and tastey protein supplement. If you don't want to take my word for it, listen to Atlanta-based trainer Corey Ritter of the Fitness Factor below...

Forget the fancy packaging and multi-syllabic scientific terms that are used to describe the nutrition benefits of expensive powders, gels, and other liquid concoctions found at General Nutrition Stores. Muscle Milk and its similar-marketed cousins of the "endurance fuel" family have nothing on moo milk and Hershey's syrup. Seriously.

With the increasing demand and use of protein and carbohydrate drinks aimed at the hard-core athlete, the New York Times published comments from an un-scientific taste and performance test of leading post-activity sports drinks designed to optimize recovery. In "Gear Test: How About a Spin and Tonic?", Gatorade Protein Recovery Shake, Met-Rx RTD, EAS Myoplex Read-to-Drink, Powerbar Recovery, and Cytopsorts Recovery Drink were sampled.

I could not help but notice how expensive all these drinks were. And the image of chugging any of these drinks after a workout brought to mind a picture of a mechanic topping-off the fluids in a race car after a hard drive. It seems as if the marketing of these products appeal to an idea in our head of our bodies as machines that need to be re-fueled with fancy chains of lab-designed amino acids, carbs, and proteins.

Then I remembered of hearing an anecdote that Michael Phelps drinks Carnation Instant Breakfast between races. For Michael Jordan, "It's gotta' be the shoes!" For this Michael, maybe, "It's gotta be the milk!"

In 2006, the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism published a study conducted at Indiana University that found:

Chocolate milk contains an optimal carbohydrate to protein ratio, which is critical for helping refuel tired muscles after strenuous exercise and can enable athletes to exercise at a high intensity during subsequent workouts. It is a strong alternative to other commercial sports drinks in helping athletes recover from strenuous, energy-depleting exercise. (Source.)

How effective? Co-author Joel Stager says, "Chocolate milk was nearly twice as effective than the synthetic products [such as those taste-tested by the NYT] as a recovery product." (Source.)

"The researchers found that cyclists who drank chocolate milk during the rest period were able to bike nearly twice as long before reaching exhaustion than those who consumed the carbohydrate replacement drink." (Source.)

Bonus: "And the athletes liked the taste a lot better."

Double bonus: Chocolate milk is relatively inexpensive, especially when compared to the $3-4 cost of a single-serving of Muscle Milk.

What is so great about chocolate milk? And what about that sugar? That can't be good for you, can it? Well...

Chocolate milk has the ideal ratio of carbohydrates to proteins -- 3 or 4 grams of carbs to 1 gram of protein -- for optimal post-exercise recovery. Regular milk does not have this same ratio.

It's not just the ratio of carbohydrates to proteins that makes a difference. There seems to be something special about milk itself that cannot be replicated in the lab. "Endurox, which has the same carb-to-protein ratio as chocolate milk, fared poorly" in the study.

What gives? One researcher supposes that "It may have to do with the different composition of the sugars in the milk. The sugars in the milk may be better absorbed in the gut than those in the Endurox." (Source.)

Whatever the reason, Mother Nature and Hershey's know what's best. Pass me some milk and chocolate syrup!

Play, think...
J.R. Atwood

Further reading: Swallow This by Gretchen Reynolds discusses the trends and science of post-workout recovery nutrition.

Either I missed it because Stevie Internets aka DJ Homeschool posts with such frequency, or he’s been having some humble casserole.

This is your boy (after drinking Muscle Milk) sporting some new fashions from Milk Bar, where the Mick Boogie pre-party goes down Saturday night in Columbus, and that chrome Cruiser sits in the window. Go spend your stimulus money and get fly.

I see you with the Mikey Rocks tank top, Steve.

LOL

Check his blog A Dream Killer.

The big news of the day is that the new MLB-Players Union agreement to more testing for drugs, etc. Of course that means the existing suspensions of Jose Guillen, Jay Gibbons, etc. are eliminated. Also, no more Mitchell Report stuff either. They may have made the drug testing tougher, but this is typical MLB Players Union hardball. Shouldn't the guys who broke the rules be punished here? It might be a little tougher policy, with more testing over the course of the season and offseason, testing for draft picks, and more tested drugs, as well as word-of-mouth suspicion, as with the case of Atlanta Braves top prospect Jordan Schafer and HGH, but the stripping of suspensions and the privatization of of the just ruins it, and makes all of us sensationalists question the hardball tactics of the Players Union and Donald Fehr once again.

Plus, no more Mitchell Reports. All of us sensationalists love those..

MLB, players union agree to more frequent drug testing (ESPN)

It may or may not be reliable, but it's just in time for "opening day", new names coming out in the game of steroids. Jose, asshole or not, was right last time. This time, there are people like Magglio, Clemens, and arguable the biggest name, Alex Rodriguez. A humorist named Joe Lavin, who apparently found Jose Canseco's new book Vindicated, released a few days too early at a bookstore sports section, has come up with a review for the book. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. Check out the article, some good stuff.

Best quote ever:

"So A-Rod, if you're reading this book, and if I'm not getting through to you, let's get clear on one thing: I hate your f***ing guts."

Damn, Canseco must have a lot of hate. But then again, A-Rod tried to sleep with Canseco's wife. Good stuff. That sure is one hateful, awesome writing style. The book's probable sensationalism is one market where money will be made. And the mainstream media will be all over it, again, just like the Mitchell Report. I'm pumped to watch the media go bonkers, and Alex Rodriguez will be a household name instead of "i kind of know who he is" to people who don't watch baseball.

Griffey's still safe though.

UPDATE: This.. from deadspin. Scanned for beauty.

Jose Canseco Reviewed: With Spoilers (Joe Lavin via Deadspin)

$1400. Amex and Citicard bills notwithstanding.

*wince*

Living in this city can really play tricks on your wallet. It's not like I didn't know the Bill was coming. That shopping "spree" at Searle is imprinted in my mind (but I do have a lovely Marc Jacobs dress hanging in my closet). I also remember that impromptu Wednesday night dinner at Nobu (those fig martinis! Unforgettable!). And the Iisli sample sale (you didn't expect me to miss it, did you?). The next bill will also be problematic. There are the Cure concert tickets (they're getting old -- it's once in a lifetime!). There are the plane tix (Tampa, Vail, San Fran -- a girl's gotta rest and ... see college friends.). Oh, and the cruise to Mexico ...

Self-indulgence and frivolity aside, however, daily yuppie life in NY can involve a certain amount of built-in extravagance; routine expenses just get away from you. Going out takes a toll. Between drinks, cover charges, cabs, tickets, dinner, etc. a night could easily cost $200. Maintenance costs -- manis, pedis, haircuts and color, massages, facials, waxing -- vary person to person, month to month, but still add up. Laundry is a big deal; whether you do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you, the cost is about the same ($25-$30). Dry cleaning can easily run $50/week. Then there's Hilda, the cleaning lady, who doesn't come clean my apartment (yet), but who I am constantly tempted to call for relief.

Food is the biggest problem, since eating out or ordering takeout is only marginally more expensive than cooking in (in some cases, it's even cheaper). In addition, it is far easier to find gourmet goodies and whole foods than it is to find cheaper, but much less desirable, alternatives (someone save me from my $7 Michel Cluizel chocolate bar habit). Stephanie Rosenbloom distilled the issue in her article, "Tightening the Alligator Belt," which outlines the kinds of corners New Yorkers are likely to cut during the impending recession. Unfortunately, Stephanie didn't really get into the nitty-gritty. So I ask you, New York, besides the obvious (don't go within 40 ft. of Bloomie's/Searle/Bendel/Intermix/Bergdorf, no more vacations, stay out of five-star restaurants, start liking dive bars ... a lot, fewer salon services), what do we do?

No, really ... what should I do?

As of right now, I've replaced my morning Starbucks with a protein bar and a glass of unsweetened soy milk. I wash my clothes at my father's house. I've replaced lunches with leftover dinners. When I'm not eating dinner out, I eat Pintaile's original pizza (whole grain crust, organic everything, $15 for a large pie), Chinese food, Muscle Milk, or some eclectic combination of the above, plus maybe some nuts, cheese, and raw veggies. When I do eat out, I go with a man who will pay for me (an all-too-infrequent occurrence these days) or I go to regular neighborhood joints. I do all that, but somehow I don't feel like it's enough. And boy is that alligator belt getting tight.

It is just SO unfortunate that I can't cancel any of those vacations. I know you feel bad for me. Don't be too upset. I'll be OK.

This is what I'm going to do: I resolve that from now until June 4th, I will abide by the following guidelines, provided that I am in New York and that the guidelines do not interfere with any social commitments already entered into.

1. I will not pay for my own sit-down dinner more than once/week.
2. I will not buy Starbucks (or any other cafe-bought coffee beverage) more than once/week.
3. I will not pay for a night out more than once/week.
4. I will not buy one article of clothing or one pair of shoes.
5. I will buy no make-up, other than maybe a new mascara. I will not buy said mascara at Sephora; I will buy it at Duane Reade.
6. I will not take a cab more than twice/week, except in cases of duress.
7. I will buy no more than two concert tickets (really want to see Feist and Tiger Army -- it's as if I've already committed to them).
8. I will go back to Lindt and Ghirardelli; Michel can wait until I'm working full-time.
9. I will not buy the mixed berries at Agata & Valentina ($11 a pop). Pears are also low on the glycemic index and don't cost me my soul. Same goes for strawberries.
10. My spring bag will not cost more than $100 (how am I going to do that?!? Especially since I've been daydreaming about a $655 cerulean Rebecca Minkoff ... not that I could EVER afford THAT right now ... I'm just sayin').
11. No massages, no facials.
12. Mani/pedis will be the standard, $9/$15, Korean salon variety. None of that spa shit.

That's enough! No more, no more! Let's see if I can do it. T-115 days, starting NOW ...