I
have many clients asking me about diets and the same questions
keep cropping up time after time. There are as many diets as
there are questions and each diet seems to create more questions.
Is the Atkins diet safe? Does it work? Should I reduce my carbohydrates?
How much protein should I eat in a day? What is protein, what
are fibrous carbs? The list goes on and on.
Let’s be honest, DIET is as nasty a four letter word as
you can find. If you have to measure your food in grams or portions
you are on a diet, diets do not work! They
never have, they never will. What does work is change of LIFESTYLE.
Lifestyle choices come from education, so allow me to attempt
to educate you. Let me give you some basic rules of proper lifestyle
choices. These choices address the most common errors we humans
make in food choices. If you are fat, they work, if you are
an athlete, they work, if you are breathing, they apply to you.
1. Do not eat white carbohydrates (as a general
rule). These are carbohydrates, they are sugar and they make
you gain weight. This includes bread, pasta, white rice, sweets
and sugar only in moderation. These sugar rich foods mess with
your insulin levels, overwork your pancreas and may cause problems
like diabetes and obesity.
2. Eat lots of vegetables. No one ever died
of broccoli poisoning. Steam them, don’t boil them, we
even heat our in our George Foreman grill. This helps keep the
nutritional value of the food.
3. Avoid fast food. Most are loaded with harmful
fat and are largely “non-food”. There is a surplus
of nitrates (cancer causing additive) and excitotoxins which
are harmful to that precious grey matter between your ears.
I read an interesting study where an author ate at McDonalds
3 times a day for one month (Super Size Me). He had his liver
enzymes and blood values measured at the beginning and the end
of the 30 day trial. The end result was devastating to and would
seriously affect his health if he carried it on longer than
he did.
4. Eat about six times a day. Keep your body
in a fed state and it will reward you. You will in fact lose
weight. I lost 42 pounds about three years ago because I was
not eating enough! If you only eat two or three times a day,
you are putting your body in a stress state or one in which
fuel is scarce. It will in turn store or hoard energy in the
form of…you guessed it: fat. By the way a Mars Bar or
a packet of crisps is not a meal. A meal could consist of a
protein shake and a handful of almonds with a piece of fruit.
Be creative.
5. Make breakfast the most important meal of the day.
Don’t skimp in the morning or you will be trying to catch
up through out the day. Stay away from the cereals and breakfast
bars. They are far too high in sugar. In the morning your
insulin receptor sensitivity is at its most influential.
By that I mean if you put too much sugar in to our body in the
morning you have set up your body to store fat all day.
6. Avoid sugary foods. The amount of sugar
you put into your body will alter your insulin levels. The insulin
response caused by sugar in food is measured by an index called
a glycemic index (GI). Lots of processed/refined sugar in a
food equals a placing high in the glycemic index.
Low insulin response causing foods amount to a low rating in
the GI. Here is my take home point: you want food with a low
GI rating (see our Glycemic Index And Carb Utilisation
article). This will stimulate less formation of fat and in turn
burn the fat you have stored.
I am amazed at the number of very well meaning parents with
children and have concerns about their child being diagnosed
with ADD or ADHD. Most of them give their kids a breakfast of
cereal (sugar), toast (sugar), and juice (more sugar). By the
time they get to school they are wired and half an hour later,
they are wasted. I recommend eggs or oats with some form of
food that is not loaded with refined or simple sugar.
7. Get your protein in! Most of the population
are protein deficient. You should get at least 1 gram of protein
for each pound of lean body mass. That is you minus your fat.
Good sources of protein include fish, meat, eggs etc.The nice
thing about protein is that is requires more energy to digest
than sugars or fat. In essence, you will burn more calories
digesting protein than anything else. Protein increases your
metabolic rate (the rate at which you burn calories through
out the day) and assists your immune system. If you are not
eating enough protein, your body will rob it from your muscles!
8. Not Drinking Enough Water. As we know, the
body is 67% water, and we should drink lots of water throughout
the day. We must flush the system continually and regularly,
regenerating muscle cells through water replenishment and in
turn keeping up our metabolic rates. Drink around 3 litres of
a day to maintain proper hydration.
9. Cook for Yourself.
Meal preparation is a critical skill. To be truly successful
as a bodybuilder, you should be able to prepare your own food.
Nutritionally sound foods eaten throughout the day are necessary
to obtain anabolism. Most male bodybuilders (and more than a
few female ones) do/can not cook, big mistake. You cannot depend
on family, your partner, restaurants or fast food joints for
the endless succession of small, nutritious feedings that are
required to manage a serious attempt at building a truly impressive
physique.
Not only do you have to come to grips with cooking, but you
have to develop a wide and inventive repertoire of dishes and
meals. Otherwise you are looking forward to the equivalent of
prison food!
The clean foods we athletes choose to contend with day in, day
out need a lot of imagination to make a life with clean food
enjoyable. Tuna and egg white need not be as good as it gets.
How do the ignorant become enlightened? Comb the magazines,
read low fat cook books, assemble your ingredients, set aside
some time and try things, reading some cook and recipe books,
educating yourself in every avenue you can will help maintaining
that fit, toned body more manageable.
10. Eating Too Much
We all know the biology. Excess calories are stored as body
fat. For overeating to be at the top of the nutritional false
move list is no mistake. Building muscle is the number one goal
of bodybuilding and body fat is the bodybuilder's number one
enemy. What's the sense of working an impressive set of muscles
requiring much blood, sweat and tears, if it's obscured by a
layer of lard? May I suggest the obvious? If you are overweight,
eat less. The simple act on consuming less food will cause you
to lose weight. Be aware, however, that if you eat less but
retain your current food profile, you will just construct a
miniature version of your old self. Less of the same will shrink
you, but your proportion of muscle to body fat will stay the
same, the end result? You look like your old self, just pounds
smaller with no improvement in muscle to fat ratio. True physique
transformation lies in losing body fat while maintaining or
building muscle at the same time.
To achieve true nutritional success we need to practice nutrient
based dieting, to lose fat and retain muscle, besides doing
aerobic exercise, you need to eat precise amounts of protein,
carbohydrates and fat. You need to become nutrient conscious.
Read the labels on the food you eat. And remember everyone is
different, experiment and monitor to find what works for you.
These 10 points will help anyone improve their dietary habits
and should be viewed as permanent amendments to your eating
plan, we are truly what we eat and that will be echoed in
our health in later life and will effect how long it lasts.
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