This weeks fitness tips. Eating “better”
Abs are made in the kitchen.
Its an old, but true, saying.
You UNDOUBTABLY have started your workout to get that body you want for trinidad carnival 2013, but without optimizing your diet there will be problems. Working out alone will ensure you have the power and stamina to make it on the road, but there is more to carnival than that. Carnival is about appearance as much as it is about performance:)
This means you need to look to the mirror more than the scale to judge results, and adjusting your diet is the best way to do this.
The advice I will be giving is very general but will apply all of you, and if you follow it (and do your part in the gym) you MUST get results.
Eating right for weight loss
Burn more calories than you eat. Argument done!
At this point I’m hearing the exasperated moans of “I have a unique metabolism where I only eat a single leaf of lettuce a day and I’m still putting on weight”. There may be a twinkle of truth here in that if you lead a sedentary lifestyle and have a certain genetic disposition, it will be easier for you to put on weight than someone who is naturally thin. This is no excuse to just accept this as your fate. You can change your metabolism by consistent exercise. It won’t happen in a month, or two, but if you stick with it you will be gloriously rewarded. If you dont, you are (right now) as slim as you are going to get! Choose!
For the most part those who claim they already eat well with no results actually have daily breakdowns, binging on tubs of ice cream and other super high calorie foods they have stocked up at home or, alternatively, what they call a “normal” serving size/diet would gastronomically humble most others. Today we change all that.
Clean house
First thing…goto your kitchen…..get a garbage bag….open your fridge and throw out the ice cream, unhealthy snacks, and junk inside. Then goto your cupboard. You know which cupboard I’m talking about. The one full of bags of chips and snacks. Throw those out too. While this may leave your kitchen a bit bare its all for the best.
Restock
Now I could tell you to eat perfectly from now till carnival but thats just plain stupid. I’m craving snacks now while writing this and eventually during the day you WILL falter. The secret (my secret) is to replace the bad snacks with “good (or at least better)” snacks.
This one will require you to head to your local health food store or to troll the supermarket and actually read the nutritional information on your food. For example
When you look at this label you see that of the 40g of chips inside 25% of that weight is pure fat. This is really important cause fat has A LOT of calories (25% fat by weight but 50% of the calories in the bag are from fat!).
So you need to put that back and find a snack with less (or preferably NO fat). A great example is Quaker rice cakes. They come in wonderful, assorted flavors and have a much nicer nutritional label.
If you crave salty snacks there are super healthy versions of those too.
Change the things you eat.
Now these are meant to be the snacks you fall on in your moments of WEAKNESS. They are not to be staple items in your diet. You will have to also eat healthier as a norm, with less gravy, low fat cuts of meat and less carbs and MUCH, MUCH more fruits and veggies. It is hell at first but your cravings for pork fat will subside in a week or so and you will find you dont mind the fruits and veggies so much after all.
At this stage you dont need to go hungry with the diet…just changing the types of food will yeild some results. The tortuous, hungry all the time dieting comes at the end of the year when its time to get sharp for Trinidad carnival:).
