With all the conflicting information on what to eat, here are four simple rules for healthy eating that most experts can agree on. No matter what your goals are, this plan will get you there. If you’ve got a great deal of extra fat to lose, you’ll probably need more than just eight weeks, but I promise you that if you follow this plan, you will be amazed by the positive changes it creates.
1- Have Four to Six Small, Balanced Meals a Day-Every Day.
Eating four to six small, balanced meals a day, meaning every three to four hours, fights hunger and prevents you from cheating with fattening between-meal snacks. It also keeps your metabolism and energy levels high throughout the day. Our bodies are being trained to stay in a constant food burning mode with a steady but not overwhelming fl ow of nutrients.
With only two to three large meals a day, your body gets overwhelmed from the relatively large amount of food it takes in at one time. Whatever the body can’t use at the time gets stored as—you guessed it—fat. Remember, anything that is not used by our bodies for energy or excreted as waste will be stored as fat for use later.
Eating by the clock will take some discipline and it will require you to take some food to work. However, you’ll find it to be a simple adjustment, and your wallet will also thank you. Bringing some food from home is a heck of a lot cheaper than those saturated-fat, sugar-filled, and calorie- laden fast-food lunches we’ve all fallen victim to.
By simply eating four to six small, balanced meals a day, you’ll satiate your hunger, you won’t feel like you’re starving yourself, and you’ll be raising your metabolism so that you burn more fat than you ever thought possible.
2- Watch Those Carbs.
Unlike protein, which we now know dramatically decreases our cravings, carbohydrates, especially those simple carbs, have been shown to dramatically increase our appetites.
We experience a big blood-sugar surge when our meals are primarily carbohydrates and hardly any protein or fat. This rise in blood sugar often causes mood swings, and the subsequent rapid drop in blood sugar leads to a lethargic feeling that makes many high-carb eaters just want to take a nap.
Even worse, when our body’s energy reserves or glycogen stores are filled with carbs, the majority of the extra blood sugar floating around just gets converted to body fat. Carbs are our bodies’ preferred fuel source. As long as we continue eating a lot of them, our bodies won’t tap into fat stores at all. Why should they? They have all those carbs floating around. Burning body fat for energy happens when blood sugar is low.
Eating a diet too high in carbs can also lead to that bloated appearance since excess carbs tend to cause water retention. That’s why some of the high-carb proponents have a sort of puffy look and aren’t as toned and defined as their diets would suggest.
So to keep your cravings in check and keep your body in the fat burning zone, eat carbs in moderation. They constitute about 30 to 40 percent of my daily calorie intake. Eat enough to keep your glycogen stores loaded, and always eat them in combination with other foods.
3- Eat a High-Protein Diet.
If you’re trying to keep fat off and muscle on, eating protein is second to none. Proteins, like chicken breast and egg whites, build muscle and are the least likely nutrients to be converted to fat and increase fat stores. Protein will also help our fat-loss efforts because, as clinical studies have shown, it causes a greater increase in our metabolisms than any other macronutrient.
In other words, the body burns a substantial amount of calories just in the process of breaking down protein. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, protein is also a very potent appetite suppressant. No need for those over-the-counter appetite control pills when we’re on a high-protein diet.
Now the big question is, how often and how much protein should we eat each day? Well, it’s a fact that muscles grow because of net protein synthesis, which is the difference between protein degradation and synthesis. In the average couch potato, this net difference is zero.
He or she isn’t causing any muscle damage, so protein requirements are the same day in and day out. If we’re bodybuilding or weight training intensely and correctly, we should be causing a good deal of muscle fiber damage, and thus we need extra protein to repair this damage.
As to how much protein we need, some studies show that to elicit muscle growth beyond what we’d normally achieve, we need quite a bit more than the RDA of 70 or so grams. I personally make sure to get at least one gram per pound of my lean body weight. For example, if I weigh 200 pounds (ca. 91 kg) and have a body fat percentage of 5 percent, my lean body mass is 190 pounds (ca. 86 kg), so I’d make sure to get at least 190 grams of protein, preferably more, each day divided among my six meals.
4- Drink Lots of Water.
Muscle is made up of more than 70% water. A high-protein diet requires more water as do intense workouts since these both are dehy- drating activities. Water is also needed to transport vitamins, minerals, supplements, and even foods throughout our bodies. If our water intake is too low, our muscle fullness decreases, and a toxic buildup of ammonia, urea, uric acid, and other bad stuff can start to accumulate in our bodies.
That’s why, to stay hydrated and pumped throughout the day, we should make it a point to drink about a gallon of water each day with and in between our six meals.
Those are the basic nutritional principles in the Fitness. Following them will help build muscle and burn fat. However, if you are particularly concerned with fat loss, you need to consider one additional factor.
