Being a personal trainer, I frequently get asked the question “how do I look better for summer?”
Start by building a solid foundation by focusing on nutrition.
We know so far that there is an obesity crisis in the UK, due to consuming too many calories. Most of these calories are from carbohydrates, more specifically sugar. It’s a common misconception that it is only fat makes you fat.
Many people still don’t know what a carbohydrate is, if asked they will reply with bread, pasta or sweets. Fruit is a simple carbohydrate because its sugars can be broken down in the body very easily, where as a vegtable is more complex (doesn’t taste very sweet), takes longer to break down and they hardly contain any calories.Your body has a limited capacity to store excess carbohydrates, but it can easily convert those excess carbohydrates into excess body fat.
It’s hard to lose weight by simply restricting calories. Eating less and losing excess body fat do not automatically go hand in hand. Low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diets generate a series of biochemical signals in your body that will take you out of the balance, making it more difficult to access stored body fat for energy.
Result: you'll reach a weight-loss plateau, beyond which you simply can't lose any more weight.
Diets based on choice restriction and calorie limits usually fail. People on restrictive diets get tired of feeling hungry and deprived. They go off their diets, put the weight back on (primarily as increased body fat), and then feel bad about themselves for not having enough will power, discipline, or motivation.
Weight loss has little to do with willpower. You need information, not will power. If you change what you eat, you don't have to be overly concerned about how much you eat. Adhering to a diet of low carbohydrate meals, you can eat enough to feel satisfied and still wind up losing fat-without obsessively counting calories or fat grams.
Even though carbohydrates essentially are fat free, excess carbohydrates end up as excess fat. But this isn’t the end, if we have something high in sugar (simple carbohydrate) this will obviously generate a rapid raise in our blood sugar levels and our body will release insulin (which is a storage hormone) to lower the sugar levels by STORING IT AS FAT, incase of famine in the future
And it gets worse, not only does the insulin store the simple carbohydrate as fat, it also tells the body not to use any of its stored fat!!
Diets high in refined sugars release more insulin thereby allowing less stored fat to be burned.
This insulin also causes hunger, often only a couple of hours after a meal. Which is what gives you a ‘crash’ and cravings for high sugary foods or snacks, and often more carbohydrates.
It may all seem like gloom and doom but this can be easily turned around by eliminating or cutting down on refined sugar (things that taste sweet) and keeping all other carbohydrate forms (bread, rice, pasta…) to 40-45%. Generally non-carbohydrate foods (proteins and fats) don’t make the body produce much insulin.
The most important thing to do is always read the label. Major supermarkets use a traffic light system of green, amber and red on food labels so that you don’t need a PHD in nutrition to understand everything!
Another thing to note down is the 5g of sugar is the equivalent of 1 teaspoon, so if you indulge in a fizzy drink everyday you can be racking up …… in just one drink, so choose wisely.
John Callow, Personal Trainer for Fitness Evolution - visit the Fitness Evolution Facebook page
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