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Is Your Diet Working For You?
Have you tried every diet under the sun and still not found one that's right for you? It could be down to a few simple factors that will get you back on the fat burning track!
Seems like this time of year everyone is on a diet, be it the South Beach diet, Low Carb, Cambridge, the Zone, (the list goes on), trying to lose the fat before spring hits . The weather is getting warmer and soon enough it’ll be time to show all the bits that you could so easily cover up with this year’s oversize jumper dress, black leggings and ugg boots. So you started your diet a few weeks ago , you were really good for the first couple of weeks and you lost a couple of pounds. Then came the odd slip-up, but it was only a couple of times. Now, even though you’re being good most of the time and getting some exercise to boot, the scales seem to be stuck.
So what do you do? Well if you’re anything like the general population you’ll just keep on struggling with it, regardless if you are consistently losing weight or not! Sound like madness? You’re damnright it does! But this is human nature. We are after all, creatures of habit and we get stuck in a kind of loop, reverting to the same behaviours because that’s what we’ve always done.
If you’re reading this and you’re nodding in agreement, don’t you think it’s time to make a change?
I’m in the business of results. I work in the only personal training studio in the world that guarantees you will get results in 21 days or we pay DOUBLE your money back!
So how can we be this cocksure? Easy! We plan for it. There is zero guesswork involved. I know exactly what I need to do for a client to get them that result and fast. If I fail, guess what? I go bankrupt! If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is!
How do we plan? Well it’s not just about looking at exercise or nutrition. Although these are the major components of successful fat loss you can’t lose weight just by eating less and moving more. There are other factors that come into play.
1. Are you eating the right foods?
This is of MAJOR importance in any fat loss nutrition plan! Counting calories just won’t get you there. You need to forget about the calories and focus on the source. If you are eating highly processed foods, drinking caffeinated beverages and not getting a balance of nutrients for your body, you will put on body fat. There’s no way around it, your body MUST retain water in the adipose tissue just to dilute all the toxins in your system!
Make sure your food is fresh, preferably organic, hormone free and non-processed.
Things to avoid like the plague:
Sugar (in any form)
Refined / processed foods (so if you can’t pronounce what’s on the label or it has numbers in it you can bet it’s chemical in nature)
Caffeine
Alcohol (sugar)
Wheat gluten (body treats this as sugar)
Pasteurised and non-homegenised dairy (raw dairy is fine, as is real butter, eggs and live yoghurt)
2. Are you drinking enough water?
You need to be drinking around 1 litre per 50lbs body weight. In my experience that’s about double what most people drink. Without enough water your metabolism will slow down, burning less fat, your skin will become problematic as toxins that should be flushed out are instead dumped in your fat stores, your muscles will become dehydrated, performing at a less than optimal level, burning less fat, you will even get less quality sleep, which means cortisol increases, which means it tells your body to store fat!
Guess what? Drink more water, burn more fat!
3. Are getting enough sleep?
During the hours of 10pm and 2am we have the greatest secretion of melatonin which is needed for body repair. Prolactin is also produced during this time and through to 6am. By getting to bed late you miss out on essential meltonin production and push the prolactin through to waking hours. Prolactin in the day suppresses leptin which basically tells your body when it is full. Hence, by missing out on your sleep you will tend to overeat in the day due to the decreased leptin in your system.
So take a look at your diet. If it’s flouting any one of these essential rules for fast effective fat loss, you need to make a change and do it now! Isn’t it about time your diet worked for you rather than the other way round?