Reviews, links, and resources about healthy eating, healthy eating tips, healthy eating in orange county, and how to eat healthy.

Healthy Eating Keys to Success

When you eat a nutritionally supportive meal for up to 6 times per day, and combine it with strength training, you will undoubtedly see, feel, and experience just how great the synergy between food and exercise truly is.

Remember, long lasting change, the kind that sticks and becomes a part of you that you cannot imagine living without, must come gradually, so that you mentally accept it as a part of who you are.

If you are just starting out and attempting to “diet”, to lose weight, you will eventually gain most if not more of the weight back, when you get off of the diet. In fact, research has proven that diets just do not work.

The key, then, is to find foods that you enjoy eating, and yet are still healthful and conducive to physique transformation. To review, foods that meet these criteria, you may recall, are nutrient dense, contain a lean protein, complex and/or fibrous carbohydrate, essential fats, and a starch.

And ideal meal that fits this criteria is: salmon, brown rice, and a vegetable. Furthermore, you want to be sure to eat these foods every three hours to keep your metabolism revved up, and your glucose levels stabilized.

The reason why eating this specific combination of foods works to keep your metabolism at full throtle and burning fat, while still keeping you energized, is because of something known as the “Thermic Effect of Food”.

In a nut shell, the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) is the amount of energy required to digest the food that you take into your body.

The most thermic food is protein. For instance, eating 100 calories of protein will require approximately 30 calories of the 100 taken in to process it into your blood stream in the form of amino acids.

Complex Carbohydrates are arranged into chains, complex chains that must be broken down into digestible, usable forms of sugar, ultimately glucose.

To do this requires a smaller thermic effect, but still beneficial, of about 10 calories for every 100 consumed. Fibrous Carbohydrates are the very best choice for thermic effects.

These carbohydrates are both highly thermic and mostly low calorie.

So, if you were to eat a stalk of plain celery, not very tasty, but very thermic, you would be eating what amounts to a calorie free, potentially calorie negative food.

Finally, there is Fat. This type of food has the smallest thermic effect of any.

It is digested almost immediately, and if eaten with sugar will be stored as fat, with very little energy required by your body to complete the task.

For every 100 calories of Fat consumed, only 3 of those calories will be used to help process the food.

Clearly, if your fitness goal is fat or weight loss, to take advantage of the T.E.F. you will want to get the majority of your calories from sources like protein, fibrous carbohydrate, and starchy carbohydrate, with a smaller reliance on calories from fat.

Now, the challenge for this week is for you to continue eating your nutritionally beneficial breakfast that contains the lean protein, fibrous and starchy carbohydrate, and essential fats.

In addition to this, beginning immediately, set a goal to exercise a minimum of 10 minutes a day, everyday this week.

It can be as simple as a 10 minute walk, ten 1-minute walks, or twenty 30-second walks, or… (You get the idea, right?) If you are already exercising 2-3 times per week and if you want to see dramatic physique transformation, alternate between weight training that significantly raises your heart rate (i.e. circuit training) and lower intensity exercise that still elevates your heart rate, but is geared more toward a recovery effect.

The whole point of this challenge is to do SOMETHING that elevates your heart rate for 10 minutes EVERYDAY, ideally first thing in the morning. This will create momentum for you for the day and the week.

Simple changes like this, overtime, are what have real impact on your body and mind.

It is not what you do some of the time that has an impact on your life, it is the things you do MOST of the time that are most important, and shape your destiny.

If you exercise like a lunatic, lifting every weight in the gym for one hour a day, then go home and eat a processed, artificially flavored, partially hydrogenated, salted, “food” do you really think you will experience dramatic physique change?

Likewise, if you do not exercise at all, yet eat strictly, picture perfect, nutrient dense meals, will you see your buttissimo become transformed from a loosey-flaboosy to a high-tighty? Will your 8-pack become visible? (And, yes, we ALL have an “eight-pack” some of us are hiding it under subcutaneous fat)

The answer to these questions is clear.

The answer, then, is to combine healthy, nutrient dense eating with weight training.

The synergy of this combination is crucial now that you expect to see your physique change take shape.

Remember, it is not the things that you do some of the time that affect your destiny, rather, ask yourself, “What do I do most of the time?”

The answer to this question is the key to whether or not you will achieve your health, fitness, and LIFE goals.

However, since you are taking the time to read this, we both know you are achieving your goals - right now. Keep it up.