Mass Building Foods

Here is a quick rundown of the best "Mass Building" foods:

Chicken breast
Salmon
Metabolic Drive
Tilapia
Cod
Tuna
Lean beef
Broccoli
Spinach
Onions
Carrots
Cottage cheese
Walnuts
Almonds
Natural peanut butter
Olive oil
Fiber One cereal
Brown rice
White rice
Yams
Potatoes
Whole wheat pasta
Black beans
Chick peas
Kidney beans
Lentils

Fish Oils: The Essential Nutrients

Great article by Hans Larsen on the benefits of fish oil. You can read it here.

The Best Supplements

For this post I decided I would write about what I have discovered to be the best supplements one should take and spend their money on. These are all supplements that I personally am using and recommend others use as well to meet their physique goals.

General Health

Fish Oil - simply one of the best supplements you can take, everybody with a pulse should be taking at least a tablespoon of fish oil everyday. See a previous post of mine on the benefits of fish oil here. I use two fish oil supplements, in capsule form I like the Costco brand as they are Enteric Coated (no fish burps) and you get 200 caps at a good price. You can order them here. In liquid form, which is a little bit of a better value than caps, I like the Nature's Answer fish oil. You order a bottle at a great price here.

Silymarin (Milk Thistle) - the liver, one of the most important organs in the body (other than the heart, brain, etc...) . Since it is responsible for cleansing the blood of toxins, it also needs to be detoxified. Silymarin is the perfect supplement for this. You can order what I use here.

Muscle Building

Surge Recovery - a post-workout drink from Biotest designed to switch on anabolism and halt catabolism when it's absolutely most important — post workout. The formula stimulates a hormonal (primarily insulin) surge that drives high concentrations of certain nutrients, supplied by the drink, deep into the muscle cell. And absolute must to take after a weightlifting workout and can be ordered here.

Metabolic Drive - one of the best tasting and best overall protein powders available. Was chosen by Men's Health as "Best Protein Shake" and one of its "125 Best Foods for Men". You can order it here.

ZMA - an interesting supplement as most people are deficient in Zinc. This supplement is a mineral-support formula that can dramatically increase natural levels of anabolic hormones and improve athletic performance. It aids in boosting testosterone levels and taken before bed time will help you sleep better. I like Biotest's version and you can order it here.

Creatine - the staple of any weightlifter and the most studied supplement ever. Biotest sells the German Micronized version (the best stuff) and you can order it here.

Fat Burning

Hot-Rox Extreme - if your getting a little pudgy and need to lose a few pounds this is the best fat burner on the market. I've used it the last 2 years to get in shape for trips to tropical destinations. You can read all about it and order it here.

Prosper Tips

Here are a few tips for you from what I've learned during my stint lending money on Prosper .com. Using these tips should help you make the most of your lending experience and maximize your profits:

1) Only loan to those borrowers with a C credit rating or better.
2) Only loan to those borrowers with 0 delinquencies in their credit history.
3) Try to fund only those loans that are automatically funded.
4) Aim for a interest rate of at least 20% on each loan.

If you look at this website, Eric's Credit Community, you can see that as of August 23rd, I am #267 of all Prosper lenders, based on my ROI to Risk ratio. So I must be doing something right.

The Cheat to Lose Diet

Interesting interview with Joel Marion who is the author of a new book titled "The Cheat to Lose Diet". You can read the interview here.

Nutrition for Newbies

Great article on T-Nation.com about nutrition. Everyone should read this. You can read it here.

30 Free Personal Finance eBooks

On the "Mint Blog" site, they have posted "30 Free eBooks to Learn Everything You Want to Know About Personal Finance". Check it our here.

Fish Oil and "Super Accumulation"

A couple of very good articles recently came out in the latest issue of Men's Health magazine and on T-Nation.com. This article from Men's Health talks about fish oil and its benefits (I personally take 2 tablespoons of fish oil every day) . This other article is a training program from the great Charles Poliquin. Its what he calls the "The Super Accumulation Program". Trust me, its NOT for the faint of heart...

Prosper Part 2

To continue with my last post about Proser. Prosper is now offering a 25$ sign-up bonus for everyone who joins as Borrower or a Lender (I myself am a Lender). So take a look and start earning 8-29% interest on your money! Just click here.

Prosper

I have not talked at all about my Prosper investing in this blog. I look at Prosper as a nice way to diversify my investments, get a high return on my money, and generate some passive cash flow. So far, in the last couple of months, I have invested 805$ in 16 loans at avg interest rate of 23%. I have another 200$ I will be investing next week. So far, all loans are current. My goal is to maintain a 20% interest rate for all loans, and generate a substantial cash flow for myself in the coming months. If you have not heard of Prosper, you can check it out here.

Food Pyramid

Nutrition Guru John Berardi has a great post on his blog about the USDA Food Pyramid. He compares the original 1992 pyramid to a new pyramid that he has developed. You can read the blog post here.

Schwab Checking Account

Schwab.com just started an online checking account that pays 4.25% interest. Here is a link with additional information: Charles Schwab’s New 4.25% Free Checking Account

Here is the link to open an account.

Check out the great features:

No account minimums
No monthly service charges
No ATM Fees
Free checks
Free bill pay
FDIC insured

Its like having an online savings account that works as a checking account. It also links to a Schwab brokerage account so you can easily swap money in and out to invest. Pretty good deal if you ask me. I just signed up for an account today.

Levels of Personal Finance Advice

From all that I read on personal finance, I think there are few basic principles we all need to follow. In fact, there are "levels of detail" per se, when it comes down to it. At a High Level its basically:
1) Save as much as you can
2) Earn as much as you can.

In a Middle Level its:
1) Contribute as much as you can to your 401k , but at minimum get the employer match
2) Save 4000$ a year in a Roth IRA
3) Save up 3 months worth of expenses in an emergency fund

And at a more detailed oriented Low Level its:
1) Invest you retirement savings (401k and Roth IRA) approximately 90% into stocks and stock mutual funds spread across Small Cap, Large Cap, and International funds.
2) Put your emergency fund into a high interest rate, no minimums or fees, online savings account: HSBC, Emigrant-Direct, iGObanking.com

All in all very good advice and something we all should be doing. I think going forward with this blog (when I have Finance posts) I will touch on different parts of these levels and expound on them. Also, I will talk about other interesting areas of investment (Prosper.com, creating cash flow,etc..) that are not usually covered by the personal finance gurus. Stay tuned.

Diet and Fitness Experts

Here is a list of some the best coaches and diet/fitness experts today. Most of these men write regularly for T-Nation.com and their articles are some of the best you will ever read. Most of them also have their own websites that you can check out. We all can learn alot from these individuals:

Dr. John Berardi - mentioned in my first post. The guru of nutrition.

Chad Waterbury - writer of many great articles on training. Do a search at T-Nation using the google search at the bottom of the blog to read one of his many great aritcles.

Dr. Lonnie Lowery - another nutrition guru in the mold of John Berardi. Lonnie is an exercise physiologist and licensed nutritionist. You can find out more information on him here.

Charles Staley - his colleagues call him an iconoclast, a visionary, a rule-breaker. Charles calls himself a "geek" who struggled in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles' methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious results. You can find out more information on him here.

Christian Thibaudeau - writer of many great articles on training. Do a search at T-Nation using the google search at the bottom of the blog to read one of his many great aritcles.

Chris Shugart - creator of the Velocity Diet. Currently he is writing a book outlining the Velocity Diet in more detail.

Charles Poliquin - one of the best fitness coaches in the world. You can check out his site here.

Personal Finance Blogs

When I started this blog I had no idea there were so many Personal Finance blog sites out there. Most of them are very good and very informative. In continuing with my first post, here some links to a few of the blogs I read daily:

Get Rich Slowly
Lazy Man and Money
Five Cent Nickel
The Simple Dollar
The Tao of Making Money

Websites

Hello all! For my first blog post on my new blog “Fitness and Finance” I thought I would post a few of what I feel are the best websites I use/reference daily in the world of fitness and finance.

Fitness

T-Nation.com – simply the best site on the Internet for anything related to fitness, weightlifting, nutrition, diets, supplements, etc… If you’re not reading t-nation then you really don’t what you’re doing when it comes to fitness.

Fitday.com – free site for tracking what you eat everyday. What you look like is 80% determined by diet.

Johnberardi.com – simply the man when it comes to nutrition. Some the best articles you will ever read on diet and nutrition are here. John is a regular contributor to T-nation.com.

Finance

Maretocracy.com – a free site where you can start a 1 million dollar virtual mutual fund and see how you do in the market. The top 100 investors on the site determine the stocks that invested in the actual M100 mutual fund. It’s a great learning tool about stock investing.

Yahoo! Finance – great place to simply read about everything in the world of finance.

Investorvillage.com – a free site to read message boards about many different stocks.

I’ll post additional sites as get this blog going over the course of the days/weeks/months. For now, check these sites out!