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Making supportive food choices is your secret weapon in the quest to achieve a toned and sculpted body. Eating supportive foods frequently will help you lose fat and increase your energy dramatically.

The Basics of Supportive Nutrition

Macronutrients are nutrients that provide calories or energy. All food (protein, carbohydrates and fats) can be used for energy. Not only does your body need all three for growth, metabolism, and for other body functions, the quality of these nutrients contribute to satiety and are broken down at different rates. The “thermic effect of food” the energy your body uses to digest food, accounts for 10 percent of your daily calorie burn. This has a powerful affect on your body’s ability to lose fat. When it comes to nutrition for Fat Loss, your goal is to INCREASE the calories burned by eating multiple, highly thermic meals.

Protein

- Protein provides four calories per gram. Thermic Effect: for every 100 cal = 20 cal are burned
– Besides water, protein is the most plentiful substance in the body. Made up of structural units or chains called amino acids

What does it do?

- In the absence of sufficient carbohydrates, protein is used as an energy source.
- Protein is the primary component of building material for muscles, blood, skin, hair and internal
organs such as the heart and the brain. Used in the formation of hormones, enzymes and antibodies
- Protein is vital for growth, maintenance and repair of body tissue.

Sources of protein:

- Complete Proteins: Complete proteins contain all the essential amino acids (not made by the body) Sources include: Animal products such as beef, chicken, fish, milk and cheese.
- Incomplete Proteins: Incomplete proteins do not contain the adequate of essential amino acids. Sources include: Plant products such as grains, legumes, cereals, nuts and starchy vegetables.

Carbohydrate

-Carbohydrates provide four calories per gram. Thermic Effect: for every 100 cal = 10 cal are burned

What does it do?

- Your body’s main source of fuel
– Carbohydrates are converted to glucose (blood sugar), your body’s primary energy source.
– Glucose is used to help burn fat for a fuel.

Sources of carbohydrates:

- Complex: Complex carbohydrates have larger chains of sugars (starches) that must be broken down before being absorbed into the body and utilized for energy or stored. Complex carbohydrates require more energy to digest. Sources include: starchy vegetables, fibrous fruits, whole grain pasta, bread, cereals and crackers.

- Simple: A simple carbohydrate contains one or two sugar molecules that are easily absorbed into the body and used for energy in the form of glucose (blood sugar) or stored for future use (fat). Sources include: table sugar, honey, cola drinks, juices, candy, cakes, etc.

********* SIMPLE CARBS have NO Thermic Effect**************

Fat

- Fat provides nine calories per gram. Thermic Effect: for every 100 cal = 5 cal are burned
- There are three classifications of fats

1. Saturated fats -found in animal sources (accept coconut and palm oil) and are solid at room temperature (lard or the fat on steak). They are a source of cholesterol.

2. Trans fats also called hydrogenated fats have no physical purpose in your body. These fats are made when foods are processed, found in just about everything that has been boxed or changed from its natural state. Common sources are cakes, muffins, chips, crackers, doughnuts and popcorn.

3. Unsaturated fats: these fats are primarily found in plant sources, are liquid at room temperature (olive oil). These are the healthy fats.

What does it do?

- Fat provides energy for aerobic energy metabolism (sitting, walking, jogging)
– Fat assists in membrane cell structure, function and hormone production
– Fat transports and mobilized fat soluble vitamins in the body.
– Fat contributes to satiety

Sources of Fat:

- Saturated sources: meats such as ribs, chicken with skin, dairy foods, butter, most fast food, etc.
– Unsaturated sources: salad dressing, oil, margarine, mayonnaise, nuts, avocados, etc.

What am I supposed to eat?

So what determines which sort of weight you will lose? The types of foods that you eat along with how big of a caloric deficit you create will be the main factors in determining your body’s ability shed fat. A supportive nutrition plan includes whole foods: lean proteins, whole grains, fruits, veggies and healthy fats.

Each time you eat, your body must expend some energy to digest food. Each type of food creates different demands for energy expenditure – Thermic Effect of Food. This is what sets each of these nutrients apart and divide them into smaller versions to absorb them into your bloodstream to perform a variety of tasks – some are used to help burn fat and build muscle.

When foods are processed, much of this work is done for you. For example, processed flour is ground into small pieces that the body can digest more quickly. This means your blood sugar rises faster and your body expends fewer calories processing the flour. Whole foods, on the other hand, pack more nutrients, are higher in fiber, and force the body to work harder to use them as energy.

Meal timing

Consuming food triggers digestion, and digestion requires calories. By eating more frequent, smaller meals, you continuously supply your body with nutrients while forcing it to digest and break down the foods. This, in turn, can have the net effect of raising your metabolism.

Ideally, you want to eat a supportive meal every 3 hours. Eating frequently stabilizes your blood sugar levels, providing a steady flow of quality fuel to your muscles and brain. This helps to steady your mood and boost your energy. Besides making you feel better, this increased energy can help further fat loss because you will naturally want to be more active. Another benefit of a stable blood sugar levels is a suppressed appetite. By eating a supportive meal, frequently, you are reprogramming your appetite. You will begin to have fewer cravings and binge less often because you no longer experience the pain of hunger.

When you constantly give your body food with small meals your body does not feel the need to store fat. On the contrary when eating large, infrequent meals your body feels the need to store some food as fat for it is unsure as to when it will be fed again.

Eating frequently throughout the day can also help you stay energized and avoid making poor food choices. Eating smaller balanced meals often helps to reduce blood sugar fluctuations and leads to stronger compliance in making supportive food choices and long term success.

Skipping meals will only sabotage compliance. Missing a normally scheduled meal will leave you hungry, increasing the likelihood of making a poor food choice. As the day wears on, lack of proper meal timing will most likely cause you to become so hungry that you will forget about sticking to a supportive nutrition plan. It then becomes a matter of eating anything to satisfy your hunger!

Eating Fewer Calories

To lose fat you have to eat – not starve yourself. The only way that the human body burns off body fat is by being in caloric deficit. The goal is to adjust your daily calorie intake slightly to initiate fat loss. Restricting your calories will allow you to experience weight-loss, but it will be the result of muscle loss. When this occurs, not only does the body burn muscle to fuel its energy requirements, but by ridding itself of muscle, you are essentially slowing your metabolism.

NOTE: To reduce body fat, a useful guideline for creating a caloric deficit is to reduce your calories by at least 500, but not more than 1000 below your maintenance level. For people with only a small amount of weight to lose, 1000 kcal will be too much of a deficit. As a guide to minimum calorie intake, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 kcal per day for men. Even these calorie levels are very low and put you at risk for loss of muscle and a lower metabolism.

The Formula

You will not receive an individualized menu or the perfect calorie count. That’s right, we gave up telling you exactly what to eat. First, there is no “magic” number. One of the main problems with other diet programs is that they focus on – or emphasize –the numbers. Remember that food is fuel. But food should also be pleasurable.

Secondly, we could create the perfect menu plan, but you won’t follow it – at least not the majority of the time. This was our protocol in the past. Our Fitness Professionals would spend hours creating the perfect menu plans for clients. But time after time, clients reported their frustration and inability to follow such an idealistic menu plan. However, these same clients experienced amazing results. Our conclusion; as long as you make an effort to change the way you eat each day, you will achieve results.

The Balance

For those of you who need more numbers, you can figure out what percentage of your meal should be protein, carbs and fat. The numbers here can only be very general and educated guesses. You are going to have to do some trial and error to see what is best for you.

These are numbers based upon averages, based upon what tends to work for most people. You may find that you’ll have to change it around just a little bit.

Of the calories in each meal, approximately:
40% from carbohydrates
30% from lean proteins
30% from fats (with as little of that as possible coming from saturated and hydrogenated sources)

~Cheat Meals~
Everyone loves their Cheat Meals! Simply having something to look forward to is extremely motivational. It makes it much easier to avoid temptation in the short term. On the other hand, the fundamentals of successful fat loss remain constant…If you make a point of eating cheat meals often enough, you reduce the chances of successful fat loss.

As you apply these supportive nutrition habits, you make your body very efficient at burning through calories. And then, on occasion, you can put a not-so-supportive into your body because it is going to be quite good at burning through it. You’re going to enjoy that favorite food even more, because it’s become a special treat.

A general rule on cheating: make sure that no more than 10% of your meals are missed or cheat meals. So if you’re eating six meals a day, seven days a week (for a total of 42 meals per week), then no more than four of those meals should be misses or cheats. If you can achieve 90% adherence you will without a doubt get the results you want.

To your best health,

Dean

http://Cr8health.com

http://GetFitNHbootcamp.com

Tags: concord, epsom, Exercise, fat loss, get fit, lose weight, nh, Nutrition, Weight Loss

Weight Management 101: Nutrition That Supports

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