Thought I would share something I wrote up a few years back in regards to nutrition and weight control that I hope may be helpful:
20 Steps to Fat Loss
1. Avoid drinking your calories, aside from post workout shakes.
Drinks such as soda and cappuccino are a useless when it comes to proper nutrition. A 20 oz. Coke contains 270 calories. A 4 oz. Chicken breast, a serving of brown rice and broccoli are roughly the same amount. Which do you think is the better choice?
The same amount of Coke also contains 67.5g of sugar. This is more than enough for an entire day!
I strongly believe that the consumption of liquid calories are one of the leading factors in the astonishing rate of obesity in America, especially among children.
2. Keep track of EVERYTHING that you eat, no matter how small.
Keeping a record of every meal you eat is essential. It will help you determine if you are eating too much or too little. This can be done using www.fitday.com, Diet Power, or Microsoft Excel, to name a few.
You will also want to invest in a scale for this. I recommend a digital one, which can be purchased for as little as $25. You would be surprised at the difference between guestimating 2 tbsp of natural peanut butter and actually weighing it. Little things like this can cause fat loss to slow down to a crawl.
3. Eat 6-7 times per day, with 2-3 hours between meals.
I’ll admit, this is not the easiest thing to get used to, but I believe it is necessary for maximum fat loss. It requires a good amount of calories just to digest food. If you are eating every 2-3 hours, you are burning calories throughout the entire day, even when you are sitting at your desk. After doing this for awhile, your body will actually begin to feel starved if you go more than 3 hours between meals.
4. Make your first meal your biggest and your last meal the smallest.
You are generally less active in the evenings, so you require less calories than you do early in the day. I like to make my first meal the biggest, meals 2-5 the same and meal 6 the smallest.
5. Include a fibrous vegetable with at least 4 of your meals.
Aside from the plethora of vitamins and minerals that fibrous veggies contain, there are several reasons why you need them if fat loss is your goal. In order to lose fat, you must consume less calories than your body requires. This can often lead to feelings of hunger, especially in the beginning. The beauty of fibrous vegetables, is that you can eat a ton of them and barely break 100 calories. This will help keep you feeling full. Fibrous vegetables also keep things “regular”, for lack of a better term. This will be useful as your protein intake increases.
6. Limit shakes.
Whey protein is a supplement, no more no less. You don’t want to substitute it for a “real” meal if at all possible. Whey is digested very quickly. This is great when you want protein immediately after a workout, but is bad for your late afternoon meal. When you eat “real” food, your body burns calories during the digestion process. This is not the case when drinking a shake. If you still insist on having whey, at least have it with other forms of solid food to make it a meal.
7. Water. It does the body good.
Drinking water is essential for a number of reasons. One of the biggest is that it helps release waste products from your body, via the kidneys. If you aren't drinking enough water, your liver will jump in to help out with the detoxifying process. If your liver is busy doing this, it’s going to take attention away from other functions, such as burning fat. It’s a common misconception that if you drink a lot of water, you will retain it. In actuality, if you don’t drink enough water, your body gets dehydrated and will hang on to it instead of flushing it out. I suggest a minimum of 64fl.oz per day.
8. Avoid fried foods.
This one is pretty much a no brainer. A 4oz boneless chicken breast has 183 calories and 4g of fat. A fried 4oz boneless chicken breast has 294 calories and 15g of fat! There are plenty of ways to make pseudo fried foods that are healthy. Instead of buying french fries from McDonalds, slice up a potato and bake it in the oven. It may not be as convenient as going through the drive thru, but I never said this would be easy.
9. Limit enriched/processed foods.
One thing I like to do is eat foods that are close to what nature intended. Chicken, banana’s, natural peanut butter are all examples of what I mean. I also recommend limiting processed/enriched foods such as white bread, white rice and crackers. During the enrichment process, various vitamins and minerals are stripped from the food. This can lead to a complex carbohydrate being less complex and more simple, causing a spike in insulin and blood sugar.
10. Sometimes less is more.
Overtraining is another common mistake I see time and time again. For example, it is not necessary to do barbell curls 7 days a week if you want bigger arms. Muscles grow at rest and not in the gym. Try going 3-4 days between working out the same body part and you will be amazed at the results.
11. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
As I mentioned in step 10, muscles grow at rest. This brings me to the topic of sleep. I feel that the quality of sleep is more important than the length. I usually feel better in the morning if I sleep 5-6 undisturbed hours versus 8-10 disturbed hours. If you wake up still feeling tired, this will have a direct affect on the quality of the days workout, which can result in less fat loss. Here are some tips to help get good quality sleep. Cut out caffeine and nicotine(you shouldn’t be doing this anyway!) intake at least 5 hours before you go to bed, for obvious reasons. You may also want to do the same for drinking water. Nothing worse than disrupting good sleep by having to go to the bathroom at 3 a.m. Reserve the bedroom for sleep and not watching TV. or reading the paper. Clear up any pending issues for the following day before you go to sleep, whether this be writing them down or just going through a mental checklist in your head.
12. You can do ab work until you puke, but you will not get a six pack until your bodyfat is low enough.
Quite often, I hear of people doing hundreds of sit ups throughout the week only to find out that there stomach looks more like an ironing board than a washboard. Visible abs are so revered in part because they are hard to achieve. They will not be visible until your bodyfat is low enough. This usually occurs at below 10% for men and below 15% for women. If your diet is in check and you have a proper resistance training program, working abs once or twice a week is plenty.
13. Eat whatever you want for 1 meal per week. 1 meal, not 1 day.
There are several benefits to this. When eating for at loss, you are taking in less calories than your body requires. After doing this for a while, your metabolism can decrease, causing a stall or plateau. A surefire way to boost your metabolism back up is to have a cheat meal. The other benefit of a cheat meal relates to your mental aspect. I find it easier to stick to a diet plan if I incorporate cheat meals once a week. If you totally cut cheats out, you tend to crave them MORE. Lastly, there are times when you just can’t or don’t want to eat clean, such as a wedding or birthday. We are only human after all. If you have 42 meals in a 7 day period and cheat once, you are still eating clean 97% of the time. That’s good enough in my book.
14. Prepare the days meals ahead of time.
Be prepared doesn’t only apply to Boy Scouts. One of the most common reasons why people cheat or miss meals is because they did not prepare. Set some time aside and prepare your meals ahead of time. I prepare mine the night before, but I know many people who prepare a weeks worth of meals in advance. Gladware is your friend!
15. Get creative. There are a million ways to cook a chicken breast.
Quite often, I see people trying to lose fat by eating the same exact meals everyday. More often than not, they slack on their diet or quit completely. This is usually because they are bored with their meals. Let’s face it, for the most part, junk food tastes good, that’s why they eat it. Over the years, I have discovered that with a little creativity and trial and error, you can make healthy foods taste great! For example, eating a chicken breast spiced with salt and pepper every day gets old fast. To fix this problem, use your imagination. Try new spices, try adding it to brown rice, throw in some soy sauce and veggies and you’ve got Chinese stir fry. Throw some ice and fresh fruit into your protein shake and you’ve got a smoothie. The possibilities are endless.
16. Keep alcohol consumption to a minimum.
Resisting alcohol can be tough, especially for the younger crowd. Does this mean you should totally stop drinking all together? Not necessarily. It’s all about moderation. As important as good health is, you also have to live your life. If your life included going down to the local bar once a week to socialize with friends or having wine on holidays, then go for it. Again, the key is moderation. Don’t drink to get wasted. This all being said, here is why you should watch your alcohol intake. Drinking often leads to unplanned cheats. I know this firsthand. After you’ve drank, you sometimes think, hell, I’ve already cheated by drinking, why not go grab a few cheeseburgers while I’m at it? Drinking can also cause you to miss a workout. If you are hungover in bed the next day, lifting weights will be the last thing on your mind. Frequent alcohol consumption can also stall fat loss. Let’s face it, alcohol is basically a poison and your body will do everything it can to get it out of your system. While it’s busy doing this, burning fat will be the least of your bodies worries. If you are going to drink, try having a glass of water in between drinks as this will keep you hydrated. The more hydrated you are, the more efficiently you will burn fat.
17. Take measurements every few weeks and adjust calorie intake accordingly.
Taking measurements every few weeks will help in gauging your progress. Measurements don’t lie, while scales are often unreliable. You can purchase a Myotape or similar body measuring tape for less than $10. I like to take measurements at the following points:calves,thighs,hips,belly button,chest,neck,upper arms, forearms and wrists. You want to measure at the widest point of each respective part. I also like to take my measurements unflexed, first thing in the morning as I find it more accurate. I’ve measured by biceps cold/flexed and then later warm/flexed and there was a difference in nearly 1.5 inches. Log your measurements in a spreadsheet or even a notebook.
18. Limit refined carbohydrates.
While foods labeled as “fat-free” or “low fat” are in fact, fat free and low fat, they usually have a ton of refined sugars. This can include various types of ice cream, salad dressing, marinades, protein bars, etc. If one of the first few ingredients is sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc, then stay away from it. High amounts of these can raise your blood sugar and insulin levels and cause your body to hang on to fat instead of burning it.
19. Just do it !
Don’t get caught up in if you should do cardio in the morning or at night or if you should lift heavy or light, just do it! When it comes to working out, it is my opinion that consistency is more important than anything. For example, will you burn less fat by doing cardio after dinner vs. unfasted in the morning? More than likely. But I guarantee you will burn even less if you don’t do it at all.
20. The most important step of all.
Just because something works for one person, does not mean it will work for everybody. Every body is different, so experiment and see what works best for YOU! For example, some people have good results by limiting carbs to around workout time, while others can lose fat by eating them around the clock. For some people, cardio is essential to fat loss, for others as long as they lift weights on a consistent basis, that is all they need. If you are experiencing a stall in your fat loss, look at your diet and exercise logs (you are keeping these right?) and try changing things up for a few weeks. After that time, check measurements and tweak as necessary. Did I mention that just because something works for one person, does not mean it will work for everybody?
Jason