4 Cornerstone Nutrition Tips for Fat Loss
Nutrition is the topic people have been asking me about the most lately. The reason for that seems to be because everyone has been really putting in the effort in their training, and they’ve realized they can’t do it without eating the right foods.
You see, gone are the days when you can lose weight by diet or exercise alone. Today you need both.
If you lose through diet alone, you’re bound to lose muscle at the same time you’re losing fat. When that happens, and you return back to your normal eating (which inevitably happens at some point), you will regain the weight… and MORE! That’s the typical yo-yo diet nightmare; not fun.
If you attempt to lose through exercise alone, but don’t eat the right proportions of nutrients at the right times of day, you’ll be cheating yourself out of the great results you could be getting if you were to only eat the right foods.
Here’s 4 nutrition tips that are crucial for you to get results for weight loss training:
- Eat 5-6 meals per day. You may have heard this a lot, but you still tell yourself you don’t have time for between meal healthy snacks because of your busy schedule. Look… take yourself to GNC or Max Muscle or Target, pick yourself up some ready-to-drink protein shakes (the Myoplex brand is a good one), and you’ll be half way there. Then take some fruit, cheese sticks, nuts, a few cliff bars, and some wasa crackers and you’ve got some serious snack ammo.
- Plan your meals. Have you heard the cliché, “If you fail to plan you plan to fail”? If you don’t plan you’ll end up going for what’s most convenient, and that can sometimes be a big mistake.
- Take 3 or so hours every Sunday to do some shopping, cook/prepare some meals, and pack them in tupperware in the fridge and the freezer for the week. This tip is worth its weight in gold. Three of my favorites dishes for this are whole wheat past w/ marinara sauce, tuna w/ low fat mayo (throw in a can of corn and some hot sauce and eat w/ a whole wheat tortilla…yummmm, and baked chicken breast w/ brown rice and a garden salad.
- Have a protein/carb shake after every exercise session, especially the intense ones, such as our bootcamp routines. This one is a must for anyone who lifts weights. Usually an insulin spike is something you don’t want, because that means fat storage. However…if the insulin spike is within about 30 minutes after an intense exercise session, and you have the liquid protein for quick digestion such as whey protein, that insulin spike works toward muscle gain which will help you burn more fat then the fire-pits of hell on the fourth of July! Yee-Haw!! A 2 to 1 carb to protein ratio is what we recommend. That means if the shake has 30 grams of carbs, usually in the form of dextrose and maltodextrin, it should have 15 grams of protein.
There you have it. These 4 nutrition tips are the cornerstone of a fat loss nutrition strategy. Print it out. Memorize it. Magnetize it to your fridge. Whatever you do, do it!
No More Excuses!
Your Trainer For Life,
Forrest
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 9:47 pm.
