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TOP 3 NUTRITION AND FITNESS TIPS FOR WEIGHT LOSS

Nutrition Tips for Successful Weight Loss

#1  Portion Control – You may think you are eating one thing but are actually eating a whole lot more.  Get out your measuring cups and spoons, pull out the scale if you need to, and spend the next 2 days measuring your food.  Serve yourself what you normally do and then measure it.  You will be surprised.  One of my clients thought she was eating a couple servings of cut up fruit in a Tupperware container when she was actually eating 4 cups of fruit!  Don’t measure forever, just for a couple days to retrain yourself what 3oz of protein really looks like.

#2 Eat Your Veggies! – Try to cover 50% of your plate with vegetables at lunch and dinner and consider having some veggies at one of your snacks.  Vegetables are high in fibre so they help fill you up and make your body work hard to digest them.  They are also low in calories.  Try to eat more of the leafy green vegetables like kale, bok choy, gai lan, cabbage and broccoli, as well as other vegetables like peppers, cucumber, cauliflower, celery, tomatoes, zucchini, snow peas, green beans, lettuce, radishes, mushrooms, onion, jicama, sprouts and eggplant.  Eat moderate portions of the more caloric vegetables like peas, carrots, corn, parsnips, beets, turnip, potato, sweet potato and squash.

#3 Don’t Be Perfect – Eating perfectly 100% of the time doesn’t last and you will find that you begin to feel deprived and want to cheat.  Aim to eat well 80% of the time.  Still allow yourself moderate portions of your favorite foods occasionally, enjoy them, and then get right back on your healthy eating plan.  By allowing yourself treats 20% of the time you have more control over your food choices, you can decide if you want to spend your treat on a stale muffin at your meeting or save it for your favorite desert at the restaurant on the weekend.   You are the boss.  You get to choose.  It isn’t all or none, it’s about balance.  So remember the 80/20 Rule.

Fitness Tips for Successful Weight Loss  

There are thousands of theories for “the best” methods of weight loss, yet in keeping things simple, we will bring it back to three fundamentals that if implemented properly, will not fail to provide you with the results you are looking for. 

#1 Make a Plan – The plan ensures you remain consistent to your fitness goals.  The plan should include a minimum of four hours a week, with one hour in your appropriate heart rate zone (see tip #3) to lose weight.  Without a long and short term plan that is adhered to on a consistent basis, you will get on the fitness yo yo.

#2 Variety – Supplement that plan with variety.  Change facilitates growth and it is no different for your musculature or body composition.  A great example is incorporating outdoor pursuits into your plan while we approach the summer.  Maintain your average of 4 times / wk for 1 hr, but change the stimulus.  Inside, ensure you are doing a combination of cardio exercise and weight training to receive the full benefit of burning fat mass and building lean muscle mass while maximizing your time. 

#3 Accountability – Ensure there is a system of accountability to your plan and variety. Utilizing a heart rate monitor enables you to have a personal trainer 24 hours a day and is a great way of making sure you are doing enough to burn fat mass, but not too much so that you are out of your aerobic threshold. A great heart rate monitor will provide you with a target heart rate and the training zone you need to burn calories.  There are a variety of methods at arriving at your zone from specific vo2 max test, to a treadmill walk test, to an average range equation based on clinical studies.

For more information… feel free to contact…. matt young matt@innovativefitness.com, or at 604-218-1716.