In my last article, I looked at mind-set. I said there was nutrition and training also, so let’s move on to
NUTRITION.
Everyone thinks of nutrition differently. The majority of people want to lose weight. If you think you have to reduce the quantity, or put a restriction on the food you can have, it’s not true! You can, with moderation, have what food you want but you have to put yourself into a calorie deficiency. This means you burn more calories than you have eaten. This doesn’t mean hours of your day are spent on a cardiovascular machine; you can also do this by lifting weights, so a good mixture is required. You’re best having clean food, freshly prepared which takes just as long to prepare rather than having pre-prepared meals from your local supermarket.
I always ask one important question before going too far into the nutrition zone.
Mama Life readers, when is your body at its busiest?
A) morning
B) afternoon
C) evening
This isn’t a trick question! The answer is A. This means always starting with a BREAKFAST. Why is this? Because, just as the name suggests, when we get up in the morning we must
‘Break-the-Fast’.
Look at it like this: we go to bed by say 11pm and we awake at 6.30am. During this time, our body has been repairing from the day before, and is preparing for the day ahead. This takes a lot of energy! So, we must replenish our energy stores, ready for the day.
More importantly however, to lose weight, our body must burn-up the excess fat, but to do this, just like a fire needs wood to keep it burning, our body needs food to help it continue to burn away at the excess fat. Now, I always recommend eating around 6 meals; please don’t panic this doesn’t mean the size of the big meals that our grand-parents would eat! We are not as active as they were so our meals are smaller in size. With snacking in-between, I would say that we must eat every 3-4 hours to keep our body going on what food we have so, this is the reason for smaller portions.
Forget about eating with your eyes…simply, the portion you see may not be as big as you want. Take having a curry…how many of you would pour it all onto a plate thinking that will do me, but in reality, you only eat around a half … or the special occasion meal where the fancy restaurant brings out the right portion but you think ‘I need to stop off at the takeaway on the way home’.
I will continue next time on nutrition as we have more to cover
REMEMBER THIS IS YOUR GOAL, YOU CAN REACH IT.