Beyond hitting the weights and doing cardio nothing will do the body better than the types of foods that you put into it. You truly are what you eat and if that is the case do you really envision yourself as that greasy burger from the local fast food joint? You probably do not.
One of the biggest things I can not stand, actually it is a widely used term to describe a nutrition plan and that is the word “diet”. To me the word diet has been so overused to mean you are starving yourself on some kind of fad eating program.
What you need to learn is proper nutrition not how to starve yourself. It is not as hard as you may think and once you get the hang of it, eating healthy will be just as easy as anything else you already do in your life on a daily basis.
To start you need to know what kinds of food you can eat. I won't list every possibility here as there are literally thousands of foods on the market. I will say this though and that is there are three basic areas of foods you should concentrate on when you make up your plate to eat. They are protein (chicken breasts, lean meats), carbohydrates (yams, potatoes, beans, fruits) and green vegetables (spinach, broccoli, asparagus).
If you keep it to just these three categories, you should easily lose up to four pounds in your first week and one to two pounds each week thereafter. This occurs because you are giving your body the necessary nutrients it needs to function and since you are not over feeding yourself your metabolism will burn up what you take in. In other words there is not extra food being stored away in those “love handles” on those “thighs”.
You want each of those three categories to be of equal portion size. No need to buy expensive scales or measurement devices and we do not count points. We simply take the same amount of size (you can eye it up and estimate it) of each food category and put it on our plate.
Now how big is a portion? Again no need for scales and measuring, we determine that a portion size is the same size of your clenched fist. So go ahead right now and make fist as if you were going to throw a punch (just do not hit anyone). That is the size of the amount of food you will need for each food category.
Knowing which foods to eat and how much of each food category should on your plate now prepare to eat six times each day about every two and half to three hours. If you have a tight schedule and can not make the meals every 3 hours then prepare all of your meals ahead of time. That is what works for me. Then I put my meals in plastic containers and take them with me to the office.
As you can see it is not rocket science but it does take a small lifestyle change to accept the fact that you will do things a bit differently then you had before. In the long run it will be worth it because you will be shedding off those extra pounds.
