Your body is beautiful. It’s a beautiful representation of how you live your life. If you eat excessively, your body rewards you by storing the excess calories on your hips and butt, if you eat poor quality or fatty foods, your body rewards you with bad skin and hair (not to mention that halitosis!).
So it kinda makes sense that if you don’t like the way you look, then by altering your lifestyle, you should be able to change the way your body represents you!
(For the life of me I cannot change your bone structure so I’ll try to do my best without enlisting in the help of a surgeon!).
We all know that with a balanced workout, we can lose Ibs of fat and gain some muscle tone and I will be covering that in another issue.
Today I am going to provide you with 10 Rules to Great Nutrition. Adhering to these principles will not only change your body shape, but it will also put you one step ahead of the rest.
Here Are The 10 Rules to Great Nutrition:
1. Eat every 2-3 hours.
I believe that if you eat every 2-3 hours, you will maintain an elevated metabolism, provide your body with a steady influx of energy and by maintaining a steady blood sugar balance will also utilise energy from your fat stores.
Now I am not talking about a meal at every turn, just small simple snacks. Keep your breakfast as the biggest meal of the day, and by snacking, you can maintain small meals throughout the rest of the day. You should always eat for what you are about to do. So if you are about to go to bed, then you want to keep your last meal small and light. If you are about to go to work, then you will need to adjust your meals accordingly.
Keep it simple, keep it smart and try to conform to the rules below.
2. Eat complete, lean protein each time you eat.
You need to eat from a protein source, every time you feed yourself. Regardless of whether you are a vegan, vegetarian or meat feaster, slow to digest, greater calories burned to digest proteins far outweigh muffins, pastries and other light sugar infested carbs sources.
3. Eat greens every time you eat.
In addition to a good quality, lean protein source, you need to eat some type of green every time you eat. A handful of nuts or berries, or a ¼ of an avocado will help you out but try to get some sort of green vegetable or salad into your snack as well.
4. You need to deserve your carbs.
Not all carbs are created equal! Green veg and berries are great and a healthy source of nutrition. The carbs I’m referring to here are: rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, etc. You need to deserve these carbs. Ideally I would prefer you ate them once a week and even more ideally I would prefer you ate them after exercise.
These are poor dietry choices for people who are overweight and looking to transform their body shape. Once you achieved your desired body shape, you can start to eat them ... but be warned ... it may not take very long before your body shape switches back to what it is today ... Best to just stay clear and eat one a week and after training, when your body is more able to tolerate them.
5. Stop being Fat Phobic.
Fat does not make you fat!!
Sugar makes you fat. Healthy smart fat choices will not only improve your health, but they will also help you lose weight.
How long have we been a fat free/low fat nation? Has that made any change to heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, diseases or could I say that we are probably even worse now that we were 10 years ago ... Hmmm, let me think on this one... ITS NOT FAT THAT’S MAKING YOU FAT!!
The 3 types of fat, which should be eaten in equal portions, are
Saturated: Lean (ideally organic) animal products; organic butter and organic coconut oil – both perfect for cooking in.
Monounsaturated: Nuts, Olives and Olive Oil (perfect for salads – NOT for high temperature cooking).
Polyunsaturated: Fish Oil, Flaxseed, Nuts.
6. Liquid Nutrition
Best choices of fluid intake is water and green tea, both healthy non-calorie containing drinks.
You need to remove all fizzy drinks (inc diet), alcoholic and certainly fruit juices from your daily diet.
I understand the social need for alcohol, so this should be kept to a minimum and pick lighter drinks, such as Gin & Tonic, Vodka, Lime & Soda, Red Wine. Alternating between alcohol and water on a night out is a great way to help the hangover in the morning.
Absolutely no lager or beer, if you are looking to drop inches around your waist, you need to change your poison.
Aim to drink a third of your body weight (kg) in water (ml).
Eg: 90kg guy should aim for 3 litres a day, a 60kg women should aim for 2 litres a day. This does not include training days, when your water intake should be substantially more.
7. Avoid Meal Replacement Drinks.
The sugar intake in most of these are abusive. I would recommend a high quality protein shake after training (and even at times when you cannot fit in a proper snack) but try to limit these to one a day or two on training days maximum. I would prefer if most of your dietary intake came from whole unprocessed foods.
8. Stick to the 80/20% Rule.
Try to eat well 80% of the time and then you can justifiably have a cheat meal 20% of the time. I like to start everyone off like this, stick to 100% good for 2 weeks and then have one whole day off! That’s right chips and ice cream if you like from the moment your head lifts from the pillow! HOWEVER, you will feel so lousy the day after this day, that you should hopefully understand the importance of good nutrition. Then you can stick to a 4 days on, one day off routine. But rather than a whole day, let’s try to stick to a cheat meal. So really its eat 100% for 5 days and then in the evening of your 5th day, you can eat your cheat – just make sure that you eat your protein source first and as soon as your butt leaves the seat, you stop your cheat. It’s a cheat meal, not a cheat evening.
9. Prepare your food for the next 4 days.
If you have not prepared your foods for the next few days – how are you expected to maintain strict eating habits? If you do not have something prepared, stocked up in a tupperware box or in a freezer bag, it will be all too easy to steer off course and snack on something sweet or processed from the local 7-11.
NEVER shop when you are hungry!!
10. Balance daily food choices with healthy variety.
Let’s face it, when you’re busy during the week, you’re not going to be spending
a ton of time whipping up gourmet meals. During these times you’re going to
need a set of tasty, easy to make foods that you can eat day in and day out.
However, once every day or a few times a week, you need to eat something different,
something unique and tasty to stave off boredom and stagnation.